


Missing Sherlock

by alivingfire



Series: Bookshop [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU - Bookshop, BBC Sherlock - Freeform, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-16 17:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alivingfire/pseuds/alivingfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Reichenbach -<br/>London lives on without its vigilante hero. Days slide on into more days and people keep doing their strange, inane routines, and John Watson is among them.</p><p>Then a stranger appears in 221B and everything goes mad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Get ready for the Reichenfeels. 
> 
> I made the rating higher for this one, as well as added an archive warning; this is definitely a John Watson in the clutches of depression, and there are mentions of suicide. There will also be violence in the later chapters. 
> 
> As always, all thanks to [Ruth](http://theteadragon.tumblr.com/) for the support, inspiration, and Britpicking duties. This would have been much harder to read without her help. 
> 
> All questions, comments, and ideas are welcome at my [Tumblr](http://yourconductoroflight.tumblr.com).

The color was run from the world when Sherlock Holmes took a leap off a building. It leaked like the halo of blood that spread from John’s best friend’s skull.

Grey. That’s all there was, anymore. Grey and maybe some white and black, but even those were too bright for John’s new world.

Post-Sherlock. That’s how he classified this new world in his mind. There was pre-Sherlock, which smelled like exotic spices and was smeared with colors like emerald green and blood red. Then there was during-Sherlock, which was explosions of hues that John didn’t even have names for; exciting and intoxicating and brand new and entirely too much and not enough at the same time.

(Post-Sherlock. John had never planned to move any further than during-Sherlock. It was a shock to his system and he still hadn’t quite recovered. Would never recover.)

London lived on without its vigilante hero. Days slid on into more days and people kept doing their strange, inane routines, and John Watson was among them. He hit the alarm off at precisely six every morning and dragged himself to the surgery. Then he dragged himself back to Baker Street at precisely five in the afternoon to sit in Molly’s chair and stare at things – sometimes the violin case, sometimes the skull (Kensington, John called him, because that was a happy memory that still glowed within him, not threatening to crumble his ribcage like most the other memories did), but mostly he stared at the grey leather throne that used to hold everything.

Sometimes he remembered to eat. (Mostly he didn’t.)

Ms. Hudson found reasons to check on him. She tutted and fussed and he let her, because that’s how she coped. He never accompanied her back to the grave. There was no reason. Sherlock wasn’t there. That was not him, buried six feet under. That was merely his transport; everything that ever held him back.

John used to dream of assault rifle gunfire in an excruciatingly hot desert, of fallen comrades and a piercing, shattering piece of metal embedded in his body. He used to wake with the ringing voices of dying men and the horrible whirring of helicopter blades in his ears. Not anymore. His dreams had morphed. (Sherlock changed everything else in his life, why not his dreams as well?) Now, he rarely slept, but when he did he experienced only two dreams: one where Sherlock jumped off a building and one where he didn’t, where he was still here with John. (Where he _should_ be.)

Both led to waking to the sound of his own screams, sheets thrown from the bed in rage or soaked in sweat. A violin soundtrack now wafted through his every night, so realistic that John ran downstairs after several of the first nightmares expecting to see Sherlock silhouetted in the window, instrument perched on his shoulder. The disappointment was so crushing that John began forcing himself to stay in bed throughout the night, no matter how much he wanted to believe the music was real. They would eventually fade enough for him to fall back asleep, or at least to let him unclench his hands from the sheets to keep himself in bed.

John thought that maybe if he could discover Sherlock’s motive, he’d be able to move on. (Not get over it, never get over it. But at least he could start to move forward, rather than staying in the same place.) He couldn’t though. Sherlock had shown absolutely zero suicidal tendencies. If John hadn’t seen him jump, he never would have believed it. There was no reasoning behind it. Sherlock had been nearly the same through this case as he had with most of the others, except the stealing a gun and using John as a hostage part, as well as his distance as the case progressed.

This was what was driving John absolutely insane. It’s what he thought of when he resumed his silent vigils in Molly’s chair every day after work. But he was no Holmes; no brilliant brainwaves hit him despite his hours of deliberating. It kept him from eating, it kept him from sleeping. It’s what was slowly killing him. (He punched out the bathroom mirror so he didn’t have to see the strain or, worse, the blankness on his face anymore.)

So John went on with his life, but that was just because it’s what was expected. He slid on a smile and pretended, but he knew it was all for naught. The people who asked him how he was doing knew better than to believe his halfhearted replies of “fine” and “getting better.”

John’s Sig stayed locked in his bedside table. He wouldn’t use it, he promised himself. If he could survive after being shot and invalided without resorting to suicide, he could do it again.

(He hoped, anyway.)

Sometimes, during his evening sits, he brought the gun down and set it right next to the violin. A pretty picture of Baker Street, summed up in one. Two souls, giving and taking, protecting and saving, loving and living. The violin: Sherlock’s grace, his mystery, his beauty, his intelligence. The gun: John’s bravery, his foolishness, his willingness to rush after danger without a second thought.

He thought of the pistol as his last resort. If he couldn’t live with it all anymore, he would end it himself. He had enough strength in him to do that, at least.

 

 

 

It had been two months since Sherlock jumped, and Sarah told him to take a week off from the surgery. He complied, then spent seven full days wearing a path into the 221B carpets from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon, when he then resumed his staring at objects from his usual perch. Sarah cautiously asked about his time off when he returned, and when John just turned his blank stare to her, she quickly found a reason to flee the room, tears pooling into her eyes.

(John should have cared. He really should.)

(He didn’t.)

(It’s like stealing John’s emotions was Sherlock’s last trick. John called him a machine, then turned into one.) 

 

 

It had been three months since Sherlock jumped. John was staring at the vast array of bread options in the Tesco’s around the corner from the flat. (White. Wheat. Whole grain. Flatbread. Sweetbread. What in the actual hell.) He heard the sharp intake of breath and looked up to see an already tearful Molly staring at him from down the aisle.

“John! I-I haven’t seen you in a while, how…” but she didn’t finish her sentence. There’s no need; John assumed that his face answered it all. Hers crumpled in reply.

“I’m so sorry, John.”

“Don’t be. Not your fault.” John knew the words came out sharper than how he meant, but he was so far past the point of caring that he couldn’t have seen it with a telescope even if he bothered to look back.

Molly just sniffed.

“Will… will you come back to the shop sometime?” she asked earnestly. He closed his eyes rather than watching the tears slipping steadily down her face. “We, I mean I, I miss you.”

“I can’t.” He hated himself for breaking on the last word but it was too late, it’s out, and he abandoned his trolley along with Molly in the baking aisle. It was raining outside but he didn’t care, he couldn’t care, his care jumped from four stories up.

He didn’t black out, but he also couldn’t remember the walk back to the flat. But then he was there, and he was gasping, but the tears couldn’t fall and he curled into a ball on the couch, shaking.

(Molly just squeaked and hid the next few times she saw him.)

 

 

 

It had been four months since Sherlock jumped. John was leaving work one day when a horrifyingly familiar black sedan pulled up to the curb before him. Anthea emerged, eyes as resolutely glued to the screen of her phone as always. She gestured to the open car door, and John turned on his heel and walked briskly in the opposite direction.

He couldn’t. There was no way. Seeing the smug face of that Holmes (rather than _his_ Holmes) was close to absolute last on John’s list of things he wanted to do, between shooting his own foot and jumping off the top of Bart’s just like Sherlock.

_Don’t think about that, Watson. Don’t. Just keeping walking._

He heard Anthea sigh behind him. The clack of her heels on the sidewalk haunted him like a rather annoyed ghost. She didn’t say anything, just drummed away on her phone keyboard as he led her on a rather convoluted route back to his flat. The agitation at her, at Mycroft, at the black bloody cars wore on him until he finally snapped, spinning on his doorstep to point an angry finger at her.

“I’m not going! So you can just get back in that car and fuck in the general direction of _off_ , for all I care.”

Anthea didn’t look startled, but she raised a condescending eyebrow that she must have picked up from her boss. That just fanned John’s flames even higher, and he snarled.

“Tell Mycroft that he can take credit for this. Tell him- just tell him. This is his fault.”

Anthea was silent as always, but the eyebrow dropped. John nodded once, then turned back to open the door. It took him ages to get it open; his hand tremor made him leave several deep scratches in the fading black paint before he could steady himself enough to get the key in the lock.

Of course, Mycroft did not give up that easily. John soon saw black sedans everywhere. Outside the surgery. Next to the Chinese and Indian restaurants. Baker Street. If he actually went to any other places, he was sure they would be there too. Every payphone rang when John walked by. Every camera swiveled to catch his movements on the streets. He found Anthea in his office at work occasionally, and she would shoot him a longsuffering look every time before he walked back out. 

It wore him down. This was worse than in the first few weeks after _it_ happened and he had seen Sherlock everywhere. Every head of curly black hair, every pair of black leather gloves or long billowing coat, every blue scarf. Everything had been Sherlock, but none of it was Sherlock.

(That was when the colours started to go.)

Finally, John gave in. He walked up to one of the black sedans across the street from his front door and climbed in, and the driver pulled away without hesitation. Anthea looked slightly smug in her adjacent seat.

“Hello, Dr. Watson.”

John did not answer, and instead attempted to calm the shaking of his hand and the sudden tremble in his leg. It was a long silent ride to Mycroft’s office. Anthea led the way inside, and then excused herself at the door.

Mycroft looked up from his pile of (probably very important, world-saving) papers and smiled at John.

“Ah, good. You’re-“

And that was as far as he got before John’s fist collided with his cheekbone. John had limited himself to just the one punch, and was glad it seemed to have made an impression. Mycroft did not look surprised, but he rubbed the spot under his eye rather ruefully.

“Are we quite finished with the theatrics? I did actually call you here for a reason other than to take out your frustrations on me.”

“Theatrics. _Theatrics_? I’ll give you your bloody theatrics, you insufferable, pompous _git_. I’ve had it up to here with Holmeses trying to run my life, and I can’t, I won’t take it anymore.”

 John gulped in air like he was suffocating and grabbed the closest thing to him, which turned out to be Mycroft’s stapler. He threw it against the wall, where it fell with a satisfying smash.

But the hole it left in the wall seemed to suddenly drain all John’s energy and he collapsed into the offered chair, face buried in his hands.

“What do you want from me?” he groaned, muffled into his palms. Mycroft studied him for a moment, pulled a file from his stack, and pushed it across the table at him. A large red CONFIDENTIAL was stamped across the front. John stared but didn’t open it, as he assumed that he knew what it contained and he had seen rather enough of Sherlock’s blood painted on the concrete for a lifetime, thanks very much.

“I need to fill you in on a few things, Dr. Watson. Know that I don’t relish doing this, but it needs to be done.”

“No, you listen to _me_ ,” John interrupted. “You are not going to tell me a _few things_ , you are going to start from the very beginning of this entire ordeal and you will tell me every last detail. If I don’t find the information satisfactory, I will pull something out of that extremely creative folder in my head entitled ‘Things I Learned in the Military’. Let me assure you, it will make that bruise on your cheek feel like you were hit by a feather pillow.”

He felt the shift in him, and Mycroft’s slow apprehension sliding clearly across his face confirmed it. His military was showing. Captain J. Watson, reporting for duty. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and waited.

Mycroft cleared his throat, and began.                     

He started with the parts that John already knew. Jim Moriarty had been slowly accumulating facts on Sherlock’s life for years, apparently starting just after Sherlock drew attention to himself during the Carl Powers case. He had developed an unhealthy obsession with the detective, and kept careful tabs on him throughout his childhood and teenage years. He didn’t interfere, however, until Sherlock left home for good at the age of seventeen, taking to the streets rather than stay with his family before he could move back into his dorm for his second year at university.

“As you are well aware,” Mycroft remarked, “Sherlock could not turn away from the draw of a new experience. He had already discovered the useful effects of alcohol and nicotine on his thought patterns early in his teenage years, and he used both liberally when his thoughts became too much to process. These were the strongest chemicals available to him at the boarding school we attended, but there were no such restrictions out in the more rundown areas of London, which he frequented.”

Mycroft paused for a brief moment, eyes glinting. “If I would have known where he was, I would have put a stop to his nonsense and sent him home. But I had just that same summer moved into my first actual government position rather than that of someone’s assistant. I had little to no time to myself, and certainly none to chase my rebellious brother through the back alleys of London. I once took full responsibility for his ascension into drug addiction, but it seems he had help beyond what I thought possible.”

“How do you mean?” John questioned, arms unraveling to rest heavily on his knees.

“Sherlock lived quite literally on the streets for the first few weeks away from our home. He began in some of the nicer neighbourhoods, asking for spare rooms or even just spare beds where he could stay. He had money, of course, and plenty of it, but most upstanding people didn’t seem to like the look of him and wouldn’t let him stay. This continued on until he finally found a willing occupant that would let him share his flat, for a small fee. It was, quite literally, his only option, so Sherlock lived with the man for nearly two years. It seemed to me that it was just an unfortunate turn of fate that this man was the only one who had a room available, but as it transpired, that was actually by design.”

John didn’t ask Mycroft’s meaning again, but he did make a frustrated noise at the roundabout, dramatic storytelling method. Mycroft grimaced. (Probably contemplating the reality of John’s “What I Learned in the Military” file.)

“The man that Sherlock lived with for two years was called Sully. His real name was Suleyman Ergun.”

John gasped in spite of himself. Known as the “North London Turk”, Ergun was the biggest heroin and cocaine dealer in London in the 1990s, leading an expansive gang that infiltrated nearly all of Europe. He was rumoured to have killed nearly fifteen police officers in his brief stint in the city, as well as starting a prostitution ring that was apparently still rampant in the seedier streets of London. Mycroft nodded at John’s recognition.

“As I said, I thought it was horrible luck. Of all the people to accept Sherlock as a lodger, it had to be one of the most dangerous men in the city at the time. Obviously, he quickly introduced Sherlock to a vast array of drugs, and Sherlock did not return back to University classes that autumn.”

“Well that really is just awful, and it explains a few things,” John said, clicking a couple of loose details about Sherlock into place but still exasperated at Mycroft’s need for dramatics, “but what’s that got to do with Moriarty?”

“Everything, John. It has _everything_ to do with him.” Mycroft leaned back, and took a delicate sip from his teacup before continuing. “There was a reason no one besides Ergun would accept Sherlock. According to Moriarty, he had the word spread that anyone who agreed to let Sherlock stay would find themselves dead, and soon. Only Ergun was allowed to say yes, because Moriarty pulled some sort of strings on him as well.”

“Moriarty just admitted this?” asked John, confused.

“Not in person, no. But he kept a record, a journal of sorts, at his hideout that was raided after- after he died.” Mycroft opened a desk drawer and pulled out a well-worn old journal. It was very thick, with a light grey leather cover and what looked horribly like a blood stain on the back.

“Why didn’t I hear of any of this?” John demanded. “Who raided his hideout?”

Mycroft hesitated. “It was… an unnamed operative of mine. It happened about a month after Moriarty killed himself.” He offered the book to John, who took it warily. “Be warned, John, it is the record of a madman. Most of it is… quite disturbing.”

John braced himself, but he was still unprepared for the rush of nausea that accompanied the first glance at the contents. On the first page was pasted one photo, a Polaroid, peeling at the edges from apparent over-handling. It was not posed; it showed a boy in a public school uniform looking over his shoulder as he walked, moving quickly enough that his edges appeared blurred. John hadn’t seen the picture before, of course, but there was no mistaking that mass of black curls or those cutting silver-green eyes.

Sherlock. Couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, and already the subject of some slightly older boy’s insane obsession.

Mycroft allowed John a brief moment, and then continued in a steady voice. “Moriarty detailed every bit of his interactions with Sherlock, even though they did not meet in person until just under a year ago.” John suddenly recalled a nervous, shifty man, pronounced gay by Sherlock in under thirty seconds. Utterly forgettable, at the time. John turned the pages and felt his stomach drop even more. School pictures, report cards, therapy notes, IQ scores. A whole life, his best friend’s life, all here in these pages. He was going to be sick, all over Mycroft’s Persian rug.

“After every visit from me or our mother, Sherlock would grudgingly agree to attempt a stay at rehab. He would remain only a few days before inevitably breaking out. Even through my own thorough inspections, I never could understand how he escaped. This has the answers; Moriarty had someone on the inside of every facility that would do something that only Sherlock would notice – leave a window slightly cracked, punch in an alarm code within his view, forget to give him his sedatives to sleep so he would be awake enough to slip out during guard change.”

“But why did Moriarty want Sherlock on drugs? Surely he would want him at his most competent, to be able to keep up with him?” John had a hard enough time understanding Sherlock, but at least his enigmatic behaviours had some basis, however skewed, in logic. Moriarty seemed to jump from wanting Sherlock as a competitor to wanting Sherlock as a pet, and it gave John whiplash and left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I believe that it was Moriarty’s intention to keep Sherlock strung out until he could appear as some form of saviour to pull him out of his depths. He could offer Sherlock a better place to live, indirectly control Sherlock’s access to drugs and alcohol, and groom him as his second-in-command.”

(John was definitely, positively going to be sick.)

“This was thwarted, however, when Sherlock stumbled onto a crime scene and solved a murder within minutes.” Mycroft allowed himself a small smile. “Even as high as he was, Sherlock got a rush from actually having to think for the first time in years to which even the heroin couldn’t compare. He was told by a certain young detective inspector that if he cleaned himself up, got sober, and moved out from the biggest drug epicenter in the London area that he could possibly come to another crime scene.”

John chuckled, imagining slightly less grey and slightly fewer wrinkles on a familiar face. “Lestrade?”

Mycroft nodded, smirking. “Sherlock followed that proclamation up by deducing that his wife was cheating on him with the upstairs neighbour and also possibly with the downstairs one as well.”

John laughed, and it had been so long that he startled himself with the noise.

“When I went to bail him out from jail that night,” Mycroft continued, ignoring John’s second outburst of giggles, “Sherlock declared for the first and only time that he would willingly go to rehab until he felt he was well enough to come back to London. He instructed me to have his things brought from Ergun’s flat to the facility, and we took him there on that same night. That seemed to infuriate Moriarty, as you’ll see when you get to that section of the journal. I believe that’s when things became… violent. During the months that Sherlock spent in rehab, London was frequented with bomb threats, random shootings, and extremely high numbers of drug-related crimes. All, it seems clear now, traceable back to Moriarty, as proven by my operative.”

John quirked an eyebrow at him. “Is this one operative doing all your work, or do you have more?” Mycroft regarded him with a quick exasperated look before waving his hand to dismiss the question.  

Mycroft then explained how Moriarty would go on to try and tempt Sherlock back several different times with carefully placed dealers during stressful or high-pressure cases with Scotland Yard. However, Sherlock proved to himself that the high of solving the cases outweighed that of artificial chemicals, and never went back. John felt a strange fluttering of pride, though he knew it had nothing to do with him.

He sighed and pushed a hand through his (much too long) hair. “Just imagine if it hadn’t been Lestrade at that particular crime scene.”

Mycroft’s mouth downturned unpleasantly. “I’d rather not. I’m rather pleased with the way things turned out, though I’m sure that it was Lestrade’s early involvement that led to his notice by Moriarty and his snipers later on.”

John’s blood froze.

“Snipers? What snipers?”

Mycroft’s face was a blank slate of absolute shock.

“You don’t know?”

“Know what? Mycroft, what the _hell_ are you talking about?” Mycroft breathed out shakily, looking more unruffled than John had ever seen him.

“John, I thought the police told you. You were supposed to be informed immediately.”

“Told _what_ , Mycroft.”

“Moriarty had three snipers in place when Sherlock met him on the roof. One on Detective Inspector Lestrade, one on Ms. Hudson, and one… one on you. Moriarty could call them off with a code, but he would only do so if Sherlock jumped. Moriarty then shot himself, meaning that Sherlock would have no way to call off the snipers unless he did actually jump.”

The silence when Mycroft finished rang so loud in John’s ears that he actually glanced around for a source of the noise. He couldn’t feel his hands. His breathing was nonexistent.

How long had he searched for Sherlock’s suicide motive? How many hours, days, weeks had he spent staring at nothing, trying to figure his genius out? Only to find out that John was a part of the reason he was gone. If it weren’t for him, a perfectly boring army veteran, and an old housewife and a cranky police inspector, the most brilliant man on the planet would have still been alive.

John stood on wobbly legs and walked out without another word. He passed Anthea, who actually looked up to watch him stalk past, and stumbled out into the street. He headed off without any thought to direction.

His fault. _His fault._

Three hours later, he found himself yelling at a cold, black stone in a nearly empty cemetery. The tears that he had held back for months were finally flowing, the dam inside him shattered and rivers of salt water pouring down his face.

“How dare you? How _dare you_ do this to me? To make me think that I had just missed all the signs of your depression, only to find out that you jumped _specifically for me_. I thought I wasn’t worthy of the title of your best friend, to let you do what you did. _You made me watch._ And now _this._ How am I ever supposed to be okay again, genius? _How am I supposed to get over this?”_

He was screaming, and people were staring, then he was collapsing to his knees. He stared at the black stone through blurry tears until he felt large arms hoisting him up and into the back seat of yet another unmarked black sedan.

He didn’t comprehend until much later that those dreadful, pitiful noises were coming from him.

Ms. Hudson was waiting at the door when the car dropped him off. She pulled him close and led him slowly up the stairs to his room. She finally left with promises to come back to check on him in the morning; John prayed fervently for morning not to arrive.

Alas, it did come. John didn’t sleep. Ms. Hudson made good on her promise and was back upstairs with tea and toast at seven on the dot. A small package was nestled next to the mug, which John regarded warily.

Inside the box were Moriarty’s journal, the confidential file Mycroft had offered him, and a single sheet of paper. John lifted the note out with shaky hands.

_John,_

_I’ve sent you the pieces of information gathered so far for the investigations into the snipers. It was clear that one of them, Moran, was Moriarty’s second-in-command and is currently being pursued by my best unnamed operative. The other two also escaped the police, but I rather think you can help with those._

_Don’t let this be what defeats you, Dr. Watson._

_My best,_

_MH_

John took a deep, steadying breath. It was all he could do not to chuck the box to the floor, but instead he pulled the file out and reluctantly flipped it open.

Three angry faces glared up at him. He read the names slowly: Tomas Plunkett, Charles Waldron, and Sebastian Moran.

John sighed, accepted the tea from Ms. Hudson, and began to read.

 

 

 

It had been six months since Sherlock jumped. John’s phone was blinking with an incoming message. He had finally snapped and changed all (five) of his contacts to separate message alerts. He resolutely did not add an alert tone to Sherlock’s contact. (He couldn’t delete it. He told himself it was just in case someone stole Sherlock’s phone and tried using it to fool him.)

(That, of course, may not have been the real reason.)

The alert that had sounded was Lestrade’s, and the screen showed him just a one word message:

_Pub?_

John felt his fingers twitch. He hadn’t left the flat in three days. He stared up at the photos of the three snipers, tacked up on the wall before him. The left and right pictures, Plunkett and Waldron, had large red Xs spray-painted over their faces. The middle, Moran, still regarded him with a sneer. He was rather unremarkable looking, reddish-brown hair cut close to his scalp, small beady eyes, and a scar on his upper lip. The height chart next to his head put him at over six feet tall. Despite John’s progress, Moran still roamed free.

It had been easier than John expected to slip back into his old lifestyle. He had called Sarah to tell her he’d be away from work for a while, and then thrown himself into the investigation provided by Mycroft with a gusto he didn’t even realize he still had.

Plunkett had gone down easily. (An excellent sniper, not so great with hand to hand or short range combat.) He hadn’t even left London; John tracked him down within a week. All he had to do was follow him after a night at the pub when the man was weaving all over the pavement, pull him into an alley, and silence him once and for all with a quick neck fracture and a shot from the Sig. (Not so great with the common sense either, it would seem.) John made sure he left no incriminating evidence and saluted the CCTV cameras before quickly walking away, leaving the body to be found the next day. (John went home that night and spray-painted his first X over his first victim’s photo. He might have leaned toward the melodramatic during his post-case adrenaline slams.)

Waldron had taken a little longer. While he currently lived in London, he was originally Russian. It took help from a few of John’s (actually, Sherlock’s) contacts and a few weeks to trace him back to the quiet village of Liski, near Voronezh. John had called Mycroft, and plane tickets were delivered via Anthea within the hour. It was much harder to pull off an assassination in a tiny foreign village rather than in bustling London, but John had prepared for every eventuality and completed his mission within four days of arriving. He left Waldron in a ruined barn in the outskirts of town.

He had been perched on a hay bale, meticulously cleaning his gun, when an unmarked black helicopter had arrived to take him back to London. He’d grinned at Mycroft when he hopped into an empty seat, blood still pouring from his nose and showing numerous other evidences of a rather rough fight.

(Someone had tipped Waldron off, hence the retreat to Liski and, more specifically, the barn. And he was bigger than Plunkett and much bigger than John. Waldron also had his own gun, which John promptly threw down a well as soon as he hid the body.)

John hadn’t felt that alive in five months (and fourteen and a half days). Blood had thrummed through him, nerves firing with adrenaline bursts. Then he’d come back to London to face the reality of life without distraction, once again.

John shook his head to dislodge from thoughts of the past months and grabbed his phone, sending a quick affirmative text to Lestrade.

_Be there in twenty._

Lestrade was at the bar when John walked in, but he motioned to a back corner booth and promised to grab a pint for John while he was up there. John wound his way to the back, settling into the worn wood with a huff. In less than two minutes, Lestrade was sliding some of Germany’s finest in front of him and shaking his hand.

“Been too long, mate. What are you up to?” the inspector asked. John smiled shortly, imagining the look he would receive if he told the truth.

_Oh, you know. Still mourning my unbearable arse of a flatmate. Running round London and small Russian villages trying to hunt down the men who somewhat caused him to jump. Dying inside because he jumped to save my skin, oh, and yours and our landlady’s as well._

“Not much. Hanging on, you know.”

“Good, that’s good.”

And then the conversation lapsed into something more like what normal blokes would talk about – football and girls and damn, this is a good beer. Not that the two men had ever had a normal friendship; their favorite pastime had at one time been one-upping each other with their best “guess what Sherlock did now” stories. The thought made John’s stomach clench.

But then they were several pints in, and they had been avoiding the topic, and John just wanted to know if Lestrade knew about the snipers all along. So he brought it up. Lestrade’s eyes met his uncomfortably across the table, but he was one of those men of action as well and he wanted this out of the way just as badly.

“Yeah, mate, I knew. I thought you did, too. Thought that… well, I thought that was why you were taking it so hard. I could barely stand it, and I’m not…”

John looked up from his hands, which were attempting to strangle his beer.

“Not what?”

Lestrade ran a hand through silver hair and tugged at his collar. “I’m not the person he was jumping to save.”

                John’s stomach heaved horribly like he was on a ship with no captain, because he knew, he _knew_. Sherlock had loved Ms. Hudson, and had even probably really liked Lestrade, despite the arguments. But he wouldn’t have jumped for them. He wouldn’t have given up his life; he wouldn’t have let his most precious treasure escape its cranial cage on the pavement outside the hospital for them. 

John wheezed, pushing tears back with sheer stubbornness. Across the table, Lestrade, the gruff inspector who had faced down murderers and blood and bombs without a wince, wiped a few stray tears angrily away.

“Christ,” John gasped after a moment. “He broke us.”

“You’re damn right he did,” Lestrade agreed, wet streaks still evident on his cheeks. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, John.”

John shook his head, but couldn’t voice anything.

“Jesus, John. I understand, I really do. If my, my, _whatever_ he is to you sacrificed himself for me, I don’t know what I’d do. I’d probably hole away, hide from the world.”

John grunted. “I did. I still do. The surgery and home, sometimes to the shop. I can’t-“ his voice broke. Lestrade downed the rest of his beer in sympathy. John’s own pints were settling in him, making him want to change the subject to something easier. He suddenly wanted to confess to the good inspector, to finally tell someone of his recent accomplishments. John cleared his throat, and the heaviness started to dissipate.

( _I can’t, I can’t_ , was the mantra of the reasonable half of his brain.)

( _Oh just do it,_ said that other half.)

“I’ve been… busy lately, though,” John hinted, staring into the depths of his glass. Lestrade caught his tone and looked up.

“Oh, you have?”

“Fancy a walk?” John asked in reply.

Lestrade had dealt enough with Sherlock and Mycroft and their secrets that he followed John out of the pub, no questions asked. John led him away, toward a park, deserted at this time of night. They fell into step like they hadn’t missed a day.  

“I’ve been keeping up with your cases,” John started conversationally. “Just the weird ones, you know. Been sort of trained to look out for them.”

Lestrade nodded. “Yeah, I’ll bet you have.”

“Noticed that one, ‘bout a month ago. Man got shot coming home from the pub. Never did catch the guy that did it, did you?”

 Lestrade glanced up, raising an eyebrow.

“Never did,” he agreed slowly. “Whoever did it picked his spot well, and CCTVs were all hacked, lost all the footage. The man had a whole host of warrants against him, though. He was sure to have enemies, could have been anyone.”

“Could have,” John granted him. They had stopped walking. John turned and slowly faced Lestrade, settling into parade rest. The inspector was trying hard not to look incredulous. “How about the unsolved case near Voronezh, did you hear that one?”

Lestrade looked stunned. “What did you do, Watson?”

John just met his look with a mild smile. Lestrade swore under his breath, then put a hand to his head.

“What are you saying? And why on God’s green Earth are you telling _me_? I could arrest you. I should arrest you!”

“You could,” John acquiesced mildly. “You could throw me in tonight, but I’ll be back out by tomorrow.” Lestrade gaped at him.

“Why?” he asked weakly.

“Tomas Plunkett had warrants out for assault, arson, and attempted murder. I was taking care of a problem.”

“Jesus, John. I’ll agree he wasn’t the best type of guy, but did _you_ have to kill him? Why couldn’t you just tell us?”

“Plunkett usually worked as a hired gun. His last assignment was given to him anonymously, months ago. He set up in an abandoned office across from NSY, waiting for a signal from Moriarty. He was your sniper.”

Lestrade’s eyes widened. “And… and Voronezh?” he choked.

"Similar case. Hired anonymously, waiting for a signal. However, he was stationed inside 221a Baker Street once we had left.”

Lestrade still looked as if another few words could knock him over, but he was quickly recovering. “I’m not going to lie to you, John. I should take you in right now, damn the consequences.”

“But you won’t. And like I said, I’d be out before you finished the paperwork.”

“So now what? You’re an assassin?”

“No. I wasn’t hired, I was just tipped off about their identities.”

“And what of the third?” Lestrade asked curiously. “You’ve only mentioned two. What of the third sniper?”

John felt his eyes narrow. “Ah, well. Work in progress.” Lestrade sighed, growing quiet for a moment.

“Well keep me updated, will you? I do have a rather handy group of people under my command who are trained to do this sort of thing.”

John snorted. “Right. Let’s alert the man who has successfully evaded Mycroft Holmes for six months to the fact that the Met is officially after him as well.”  

“What do you need, then?”

“I don’t know,” John answered honestly. “I won’t for a while. He’s nearly impossible to track down. Apparently Mycroft’s best man is on it now. But I’m going to try and help, and when I need anything, I’ll call.”

Greg Lestrade nodded, clapped John once on the back, and walked away, leaving John to his thoughts. 

 

 

 

It had been eight months since Sherlock jumped. Things were worse than they had ever been, but the promise of more hunting had at least been keeping John active. Moran’s face still mocked from its place on the wall.

The man had entirely vanished. There were pieces, small mentions of sightings, a couple of eyewitnesses. No hard evidence. The only record of him seemed to be the small one given to John by Mycroft. Otherwise, he didn’t exist.

John felt like he had the outside edge of a puzzle put together. He had a rather vague description, a mugshot, and a few fuzzy pictures, but they helped somewhat. Tall, muscular man with a flattop haircut: clearly military. He had a general area where he had been set up with his rifle on the day Sherlock jumped, but the scene was already been wiped of any information John could have used. The details, the evidence, any hint towards future plans, those were the big jumbled middle pieces of the puzzle that John couldn’t figure out.  

He had begun to ask around. Sig tucked into the waistband of his jeans, John had headed to seedy bars and dirty clubs, asking for professionals to provide their services to get rid of someone. John was handed several numbers and did several meet-ups, but none of them had fit. Some of them shrugged once he wanted out, letting him walk away. Some of them got angry.

(John left the angry ones there, knowing someone would find them eventually. Sometimes he called in tips to the Met, letting them know. Sometimes he just texted Lestrade.)

His last meeting had gone like that, actually. John had already wiped down his gun and hidden it back in its drawer, as well as deleted the confirmation text from Lestrade that the body had been found, and the adrenaline was still flowing through him as he sat and stared at his sparse notes.

There was no pattern. There were no hints or clues. Moriarty had clearly chosen the best as his second.

John’s phone made an awful alarm sound. John smirked, recognizing the most annoying sound his phone offered as Mycroft’s ringtone.

_Leave it be, John. My man is handling the situation.MH_

John scoffed. Not handling it well enough, if Moran was still out there.

_Let me help._

_No. MH_

John tossed his phone to the side in frustration. A few more minutes of staring at his notes revealed nothing, so he limped to the shower. (This one hadn’t gone down without a fight.)

He stripped off his clothes, ignoring the map of bruises and cuts across his figure. (Most didn’t go down without a fight. He was used to the aches by now.)

After the shower, he collapsed into bed, exhausted. This time, he watched Sherlock fall from a building over and over again, angry violin playing in the background. He woke up panting, covered in sweat, but with an idea. 

The next day, he hailed a cab and pointed them toward Mycroft’s office. He kept his eyes closed as he thought, constructing a valid argument, imagining what Mycroft would say to get him to stay away. He felt relatively confident when he stepped out of the car. Sherlock may have been John’s biggest weakness, but he was Mycroft’s as well, and they both wanted Moran gone.

John didn’t remember the confusing route to Mycroft’s office, so he wandered until he saw Anthea, seated at a desk and tapping away on her phone. Her eyes grew huge when she recognized John.

“Dr. Watson,” she said, her voice haltingly formal. “We weren’t expecting you.”

“That’s the point,” John agreed. “Let him know I’m here.”

“He’s busy,” said Anthea, glancing quickly towards the door on her left. John followed her gaze and saw nothing, but realized that he could hear noise escaping from the room. Two voices: one might have been Mycroft’s but he could barely hear anything thanks to the thick door and carpet muffling all the sounds. Whoever they were, though, they were obviously shouting. He smiled cheerfully at Anthea.

“I’ve got all day.”

She seemed torn. After about twenty tense seconds of glancing between the door and John, she hit a few buttons on her phone and put it to her ear. John could hear the recipient of the call shout through the phone even at his distance.

“So sorry, sir,” Anthea winced. “Doctor Watson is here to see you.”

The noises inside the room ceased immediately. Anthea watched John, silent, until she received some kind of affirmative and gestured John through the door. Mycroft was sweating, his face red, looking flustered. John looked around to meet the person that could push Mycroft to his very brink, but the room was strangely empty.

“Hello John,” Mycroft said, and he wasn’t gasping for breath but he was close. “How can I help you?”

“Who were you talking to?” John asked curiously.

“No one,” Mycroft said. John cocked an eyebrow and grinned.

“Must be someone important, and you can’t even come up with a cover story. Shame on you, Mycroft Holmes.”

John had never seen Mycroft glare before. He should have felt cowed, but he had to hold back a giggle instead.

“So really, did the guy jump out the window?” John tried again.

“Speakerphone,” Mycroft answered belatedly, pointing to the phone in question as if daring John to challenge him.

“All right, whatever, keep your secrets,” John said, holding up a placating hand. “That’s not why I’m here.”  He took a seat, and so did Mycroft, who immediately templed his fingers to appraise John.

“Yes, why are you here?”

“I want in on the Moran hunt,” John immediately told him. Mycroft shook his head.

“Absolutely not. I’ve told you before, John, my best operative is working the case. He’s rather close to a breakthrough on his whereabouts, and we can’t risk you getting involved.”

“Best operative,” John scoffed. “If he’s your best, why isn’t Moran caught yet? I’d expect your best to be better, honestly.”

There was an odd knock that sounded like it came from near the door, and John turned to look but no one stepped inside. He turned back to see Mycroft glaring at the same spot. John pointed back at the door over his shoulder, question unasked.

“I kicked the desk accidentally,” Mycroft explained tightly. His face had that pinched quality that made him look even older. John opened his mouth to point out that the noise clearly did not come from the desk, but Mycroft cut him off. “Like I’ve already stated, we’re working on it. I can’t allow you to take part, but if Moran is brought in alive, I can guarantee that I’ll give you a chance to speak to him before anything happens to him.”

John shook his head. “That’s not what I want. You know that. I want him dead. I want to be the one that does it. I want- I want him gone for what he caused. For what he did to Sherlock.”

Mycroft’s face softened. “I realize this, John, but it can’t happen. I’m very grateful to you for taking care of the other two of Moriarty’s operatives, but your assistance is no longer required.”

John’s head, so clear and focused finally after nearly a year, threatened to slip back into the fuzzy world of depression. It sent him into a panic.

“No, Mycroft, please. Please let me do this. I can’t go back to just sitting around waiting for him to not come back, I- I-“

“I’m sorry, John,” Mycroft said, and the finality in his voice was clear. John slumped against the desk as Mycroft buzzed Anthea in. She put a comforting hand under his elbow and heaved him out of the chair. A small part of his mind was impressed by her strength. The rest of him had already sunk back into the emotionless depths. He was half pulled, half carried to a car by one of Mycroft’s men. He didn’t remember the ride back to Baker Street. 

 

 

 

It had been ten months since Sherlock jumped off a building. John burned all the case notes about Plunkett and Waldron. He threw the skull across the room in a rare moment of emotion. He shot a hole through the picture of Moran on the wall. He picked the skull back off the floor, apologizing to it for the crack in the jaw. He taped it back together.

He didn’t eat unless Ms. Hudson made him. He didn’t go to the surgery or to the shops. His phone died and he didn’t get up to charge it, so he didn’t talk to anyone besides the skull for weeks.

(He couldn’t call it Kensington anymore. Happy memories had become worse than sad memories. Everything was tainted.)

 

 

 

It had been eleven months since Sherlock leapt from the top of St. Bart’s. John hadn’t seen his reason for living in eleven whole months. He no longer dreamed, he just woke up sweating to the sound of a violin in his head.

The excitement and brightness of being able to track down the snipers made the return of grey even more unbearable. He made a decision, one he never thought he would have to make. (It was easier than he thought it’d be, in the end.)

He chose a date. He decided to make it June the eighteenth; one year to the day since Sherlock jumped, John would do his own form of jumping. He cleaned the Sig every day. He ordered a small box of ammunition online to be delivered to the flat, not bothering to actually restock but ensuring he would have at least one bullet to do the job. (He didn’t plan on missing.) He charged his phone to make a reservation at a nice hotel; John didn’t want Ms. Hudson to be the one who found him and he didn’t want to make her have to be the one to clean it up. He worked on a note, but he didn’t quite know who to address it to. He decided to leave the envelope blank, addressed to no one in particular.

He called the office of the Kensal Green cemetery and secured the spot next to Sherlock for himself.

 

 

 

It had been eleven months and 29 days since Sherlock jumped. John packed a bag and set it by the door. Ms. Hudson asked about it when she brought him lunch (which she did nearly every day now).

“Thinking about going off on a holiday tomorrow,” John answered her vaguely.

“That’ll be good for you, dear,” Ms. Hudson said happily, patting his arm.

John called Harry with his newly charged phone. He endured her complaints and only told her to shut up once. He didn’t tell her that he loved her because it would only tip her off that something was wrong. He checked his hotel reservation, then turned on the TV for the first time in months.

John spent his last night watching old Doctor Who reruns and running through his list in his head, making sure he didn’t forget anything in his pack. Spare clothes (not that he’d need them, but they made his excuse more realistic), cash for a cab, his note, his army ID tags. The gun would stay in its drawer until he was ready to leave, just in case.

John headed to bed early, hoping that he would have one more dreamless night of sleep before tomorrow. He didn’t.

His dreams combined: Sherlock fell and John watched but then Sherlock was there behind him, whispering nonsense in his ear, expecting him to understand, and John tried to turn and find him but he was hidden. John chased after coattails and looked around corners and he couldn’t find anything, but Sherlock’s voice was still there.

“I did this for you, John. You taught me to care,” he said, over and over. John was calling for him, but he just laughed, out of sight.

John woke violently, soft violin flowing through his mind. He turned and found the clock through the gloom. 2:43 in the morning.

He turned over, throwing an arm across his face. The violin still hadn’t faded, still played insistently, blocking out all other thoughts. John tried to push it out of his mind, but unlike other nights, it didn’t fade.

He threw the blankets back and reached for his gun. He couldn’t wait until morning; the violin was haunting him and Sherlock’s voice was still fresh in his ears, taunting him and blaming him. He’d go to a different hotel, he’d check in somewhere close and he’d just do it, he’d just be done. He headed downstairs.

His violin hallucinations had gotten worse. The closer he moved to the living room, the louder it seemed, as if Sherlock would really still be there. He shook his head and tried to make plenty of noise clattering down the stairs to drown out his own mind.

The living room was pitch black, lit only by the dim light of a new moon in the cloudy London sky through a dingy window. John could barely make out his army pack waiting patiently for him by the door. The violin was pounding in his head.

He shouldered the pack and the music abruptly stopped. John sighed in relief.

He turned to take his first step down the stairs.

“Going somewhere?”

John didn’t yell, he didn’t trip, he just turned and pointed his gun back at the room behind him. It was too dark to make out anything, but he cocked the gun in warning.

“Who’s there?” he asked, voice low. “What do you want?”

There was no answer. John contemplated putting down the gun, chalking up the voice as one more thing his mind had invented. Then the voice spoke up again, and he whirled toward the chairs.

“I want for many things, John Watson, but none are in that pack of yours.”

That voice. Impossibly deep, irritatingly precise. (It must have been a hallucination, there’s no way.)

A lamp flicked on, and John was suddenly blinded.

“Stop waving that thing around, you’re going to end up shooting at least one of us.”

John forced his eyes open, but they were watering from the flash of light. He could make out a dark shape in the grey chair ( _Sherlock’s chair_ ) and he pointed his pistol in that direction before shutting his eyes again in pain.

“Get out of my flat,” John snarled.

“No.”

And it was that word, that one petulant word with all the inflection that could be forced into a single syllable, that made John rub his eyes and force his vision to clear so he could finally see.

What he did see made his knees lock up and an awful, tortured whimper rip out of his throat.

Sherlock Holmes was not in his grave, he was sitting in his chair as if nothing was strange at all about his presence. He was dressed in a suit, as always, and holding his violin up to his shoulder.

John didn’t lower his gun. Sherlock had been an absolute genius in many ways, including in the art of disguise, so John could only assume the same for one of Moriarty’s men. His hand was perfectly still, aiming the Sig Sauer directly at the heart of the man in the chair.

“Who are you?” John asked. The man raised a condescending eyebrow and the feeling flooded through John that said even if this was Sherlock, he might shoot anyway.

“I am Sherlock Holmes.” The baritone was familiar, but easily faked. Many men had deep voices. Those icy eyes would have been harder to replicate, but he was sure that there’s a way to do that somehow. The eyes in question rolled skyward, the deep voice sighed.

“Honestly, John. I am Sherlock Kensington Holmes,” and while John usually laughed when he heard the middle name, he didn’t now, “I’m not dead, and I’m not an imposter.”

“Prove it,” John spat.

“How would you have me do that? Tell you something no one could possibly know?” the man scoffed. “This flat has been under surveillance this entire year. Not much is secret, no matter how much you wish it to be so.”

John’s hand finally wavered, but only because that was the most Sherlockian tone he had ever heard. He filed the surveillance tidbit for a later time, and steadied the Sig.

“Try again.”

“Fine.” Another sigh, then, “You take your tea with milk, no sugar, but you don’t let me make you tea anymore after the Baskerville experiment. Your favorite film is Goldfinger. You shoot right-handed automatically, and you can shoot with your left as well, but that is the only thing you can do ambidextrously. You still talk to Clara but you don’t tell your sister because you don’t want to deal with her overreaction. And you hate our washing machine, because you have to hit it to get it to run.”

John lowered the gun and laughed weakly.

“How would you know about the washer? You never use it.”

He didn’t hear Sherlock’s reply, but he did feel the crack of his knees against the floor before everything went black.


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The miraculous has happened; Sherlock Holmes is apparently alive and well. Now John has questions - and the best person in the world to answer him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two! 
> 
> Hope this makes up for the cliffhanger-y ending. Keep in mind that I am definitely not a medical professional, so all the information in this chapter was purely found through internet research. All mistakes are my own, and I'd love to hear if you catch any.
> 
> As always, questions, comments, and ideas are welcome on my [Tumblr](http://yourconductoroflight.tumblr.com/).

The London sky was his ceiling. There were flashing lights and lots of people milling about, but none of them was the one that mattered. His head lolled from side to side, he couldn’t stop it or control it, and it throbbed with each movement. His knees couldn’t bend. His eyes burned. His shoulder ached. 

He thought he spotted a familiar head of curly hair in the window above him, watching him being pushed into an ambulance. He considered waving, though he knew that was silly even if he couldn’t come up with a reason why it was.

He blacked out again.

He woke to shouts of “Oxygen!” and “Elevate his feet!” but the meanings of the phrases didn’t really ever reach him. He breathed in deeply when he was instructed to, and fell back into unconsciousness.

A heart monitor beeping somewhere nearby pulled him back to himself. He kept his eyes closed and assessed what damage he could with as little movement as possible.

He had tubes in his nose and an oxygen mask over his mouth. A quick twitch of his fingers proved that at least two were taped, suggesting dislocations or jams. He had at least one IV in his wrist. His left kneecap was wrapped, probably broken. His head ached in one concentrated spot rather than all over, and it felt as though an ice pack might have been secured there. He tried to move his head and it pulled a groan from his burning throat.

“John? John, are you awake?”

He couldn’t answer, so he opened his eyes instead. The room was dimly lit, protecting his aching eyes. A familiar face was inches from his.

“Harry,” he tried to say, but through the mask it sounded like “Hnhgne”.

“You aren’t supposed to talk,” she commanded, brushing hair softly off his forehead. “Doctor just left, he’ll be back in a few.”

John took a glance around the room. Ms. Hudson was in the chair next to him, patting his hand and sniffing tearfully. Molly was arranging flowers and balloons on a nearby table. Lestrade was lounging across the other bed, looking exhausted as always.

And Mycroft and Anthea were next to the door, stiff and out of place. Mycroft was surveying John with razor-sharp eyes, and even Anthea wasn’t typing for once.

Another quick sweep showed no sign of Sherlock.

That’s it, then. He had finally went insane. He had probably tried just swallowing a mouthful of pills rather than using his gun, triggering the hallucination and causing him pass out. He couldn’t remember details, just a dark figure in a chair and his knees hitting the floor.

A hallucination. Not the real thing.

John closed his eyes against the onslaught of pain that smashed his chest with bruising force. He hadn’t felt hope in so long, and that infinitesimal bit before he had collapsed ripped his scarred heart to shreds.

And he had been so close to getting out. Mere hours, and he wouldn’t have had to worry about this anymore.

A doctor strode in, picked up John’s charts, and walked to the bedside. Harry budged over to give him some room, and continued watching John.

“Hello, John. I’m sure you’re pretty disoriented, so I’ll try to make this quick and we’ll let you get back to resting.” John nodded gratefully in understanding, but never looked up at the man, choosing instead to stare at his bruised hands. “Okay, so we’ve a severe case of malnutrition on our hands. We’ve got your feeding tube in place, as well as an IV, so you’re on your way to catching up to where you need to be with that. You’ve got a couple of dislocated fingers and a sprained knee from your fall, but those will heal quickly enough. And lastly, you’ve suffered a minor concussion, which will explain your disorientation and light sensitivity. We’ll keep you here a few nights, but once you’re back on a regular diet we’ll let you complete your treatments at home.”

John nodded again. The doctor stopped to confer quickly with Mycroft before leaving the room. Once he left, all eyes snapped back to John. He felt flushed, embarrassed. A doctor that couldn’t even keep himself properly nourished, it was utterly humiliating. Harry opened her mouth to spout something, but the collected voice of Mycroft cut across the room.

“Apologies, everyone, but Dr. Woods has asked me to clear the room. John needs rest, and plenty of it. Visiting hours begin again at 9:00.” Harry looked ready to argue, but not even her mighty rage could withstand the composure of a Holmes, so she stood down when John squeezed her hand. The well-wishers slowly migrated to the door, promising to return during visiting hours. Mycroft herded them all through and shut the door behind Harry, who shot one more look back at John before leaving.  Anthea stepped in front of the door to bar any entry, and Mycroft took Ms. Hudson’s abandoned seat.

“John,” he started, but John couldn’t look at him. He was staring at the ceiling, just wanting to sleep. Why wouldn’t everyone just leave him be? A quiet moment to himself, that’s all he wanted.

“John, please, I’ll be quick. While it is clear you believe otherwise, that was a not a hallucination you suffered from earlier.”

He turned to look at Mycroft so fast that his neck cricked audibly. Mycroft regarded him solemnly.

“Sherlock is indeed alive. He would have been here when you woke, but it is not yet time for him to reveal himself to the world. He’ll be here once visiting hours are over and you won’t be interrupted. I’m sure you’ve got… questions.”

John thought for a moment he was passing out again, because Mycroft’s face was suddenly swimming through the air before him and he wasn’t breathing. Rage boiled low in his stomach. He attempted a few words, but the mask on his face muffled him and he growled in frustration. He mimed writing in the air with his hands, and Mycroft called Anthea for a pen and pad of paper.

John wrote _Did you know?_ and watched Mycroft’s face for an answer. The frown line that creased between his brows answered all. John scribbled that line out and wrote two more words.

Mycroft’s face went blank. He motioned to Anthea and stood uncomfortably. Pausing at the door, he turned to catch John’s eyes one more time.

“He’ll be here tonight,” he said again, softly. “I’m so sorry, John.”

John turned away, looking anywhere but at the man in the doorway. His eyes focused on the notepad instead, and the sharp pen lines he had scrawled across the page.

_FUCK YOU._

John couldn’t tell if the day flew by quickly because he was in and out of sleep, or if it went agonizingly slowly because he had to wait until nighttime to see Sherlock again.

Not that he hadn’t almost written off Sherlock’s appearance as just a delusion caused by an addled mind. It was still possible. Maybe Mycroft was playing along to make him feel less crazy.

John couldn’t _think_ , though. Too many people, in and out, too many distractions. Was this what it was like to be Sherlock? If so, he thought he finally might understand the necessity behind Sherlock’s former drug habit.

Harry never left his room. She joined in the conversations with people she knew (Stamford, Bill Murray, Ms. Hudson) and stayed out of the way to let the ones she didn’t know have their moments with John. Not that he could do much. He nodded and smiled under the oxygen mask, occasionally writing something out if an answer was needed.

Molly broke into tears twice before she left. Sarah clucked over his charts, sending John an upset look that clearly told him that he knew better, but thankfully didn’t say anything. Stamford cheerfully avoided all mentions of anything unpleasant, as though they weren’t having a one-sided conversation in a hospital room. Bill Murray, John’s nurse during his shoulder surgery and subsequent physiotherapy all those years back, also checked his charts but also dutifully avoided uncomfortable subjects. Ms. Hudson had apparently done nothing but bake before she came back to visit, bringing biscuits and cake and even a strudel, despite the fact that John couldn’t eat any of it. (John gave it all to Stamford, knowing that it least it would get eaten.) Lestrade didn’t say much, but asked John if everything’s okay with a raised eyebrow and a knowing look set on his face. John couldn’t answer truthfully because Harry was there, (didn’t even know if he would if she wasn’t) but he scrawled _I’m okay_ on the pad and pointed at his phone.

“Yeah, text you later,” Lestrade agreed. It was silent for a moment when he left, but Harry soon filled that.

“I like him,” she said. “Seems like a good guy. Is he that inspector you always talk about on your blog? Looks like an inspector. And that Sarah, is that the one you dated? She’s too pretty for you, can’t believe you passed on that one-“

John held up a hand in an attempt to stem the never-ending flow of words. (Harry was never good with silence.) He scribbled a few sentences and held the pad up despite her scowl.

_Go home. I’m fine, but I need rest. I’ll see you tomorrow._

Harry looked angry, but she was always angry, and this anger was competing with exhaustion at the moment. She protested, but it was rather feeble, and he shooed her away with a few hand waves.

His stomach clenched when the door closed behind Harry. He knew, in theory, that he had nothing to be nervous about. If Sherlock didn’t show, it’s just as it had been all these past months. John would be sent home within the week, and he’d give everyone time to settle back down before he made another hotel reservation.

There was no lingering doubt, this time. He’d set his path; a life without Sherlock was apparently not one he wanted to continue witnessing.

But…

If Sherlock did come, John didn’t know what he would do. His options were rather limited by the amount of machines keeping him pieced together.

Not that he even needed to consider that. Sherlock wouldn’t come. Sherlock _couldn’t_ come. He was dead. He was dead, he was dead, he was –

A quiet knock at the door. A familiar outline in the window, silhouetted by the bright hallway lights. A lithe figure slipping inside, more shadow than man.

_Sherlock._

John was dimly aware that his heart monitor was broadcasting his erratic palpitations to the room at large, but he couldn’t have found a fuck to give even if he had all night.

 _Sherlock._ Here, in his room. _Alive_.

“Hello again, John.”

The tone was markedly different. In the flat, Sherlock had seemed an illusion because he sounded as he normally did: aloof, imperious, mocking. Now, he sounded, for lack of a better word, _human_. Tired and discouraged and (John hoped he wasn’t projecting, but it seemed genuine enough) maybe even frightened.

John couldn’t answer for many reasons, but the most obvious was the large mask obscuring his mouth. He could nod, though, and he did.

Sherlock hadn’t moved from the shadows near the door. Half hidden in darkness, John could barely see him. He raised a hand, ignoring the tiny flinch that he could only witness helplessly from all the way across the room, and gestured for him to come near.

It was like tempting a wild animal. Sherlock hesitated, taking small steps, and made his way across the room in tiny increments. Finally, he was at the foot of John’s bed. He grabbed John’s charts, but seemed to do it more for the sake of having something to hold rather than actually wanting to read them.

“I should probably explain things, while I have a chance,” Sherlock said haltingly, waving at the mask obscuring John’s face. He drifted to the chair and sat slowly, lowering the clipboard with John’s charts to his lap. He looked up, as if expecting John to interrupt.

John definitely didn’t interrupt, but he did reach out a trembling hand to pinch his friend’s suit sleeve between his fingers. ( _He’s real, he’s real,_ John thought desperately.) Sherlock faltered the beginning of his next sentence (which, infuriatingly enough, did not begin with an apology). Both men were looking down, staring at the dark material held reverently between two pale, shaking fingers. John felt a hot sweat of shame spring to his neck and palms when Sherlock pulled gently away, but that was quickly relieved when Sherlock readjusted and grasped both John’s hands in his own.

“John, I understand you’re angry. I ask only that you give me the chance to explain everything before you make any sort of decision.”

John nodded and flicked his eyes upward, blue eyes meeting silver (for the first time in a year). Sherlock took a deep breath, and began.

He explained his perspective of that last day: of realizing that Mycroft would have been the only person alive able to give Moriarty the information he had obtained, how he knew the report of Ms. Hudson being shot was fake, the text that lured in Moriarty.

He described the rooftop encounter of which John had witnessed the finale. Some of it John had already guessed, but it still made his stomach roll to hear of Moriarty’s madness. He thought of that journal, hidden with the sniper files behind a loose wall panel in his room, detailing tiny bits of information from Sherlock’s life. When reading it through (for business, definitely not for pleasure), John had read some small particulars that matched with what Sherlock was now detailing out for him, but Moriarty’s entries had grown less comprehensible toward the end.  

Sherlock continued, outlining the problems he faced on that hospital roof: dead Moriarty, snipers, John’s imminent arrival.

“I honestly did not know what to do. If I had more time, maybe I could have come up with something more elegant, but I knew you were en route and I couldn’t risk- couldn’t allow the sniper… I just couldn’t let that happen.” The clasped hands were shaking, but John wasn’t sure if it was him or Sherlock who was causing it. (Maybe both.)

“So, I called on Molly to help me. She procured several bags of donated blood, and she ensured that the laundry truck would be parked directly below me. All I had to do was plan to jump into the back of the truck to land in the laundry bags, jump over the side to land on the pavement, and burst the blood bags so it looked like it was mine.”

John was angry, but he wasn’t, and it was so confusing. He attempted to cling to Sherlock’s words to keep from drowning.

“Unfortunately, not all went according to plan. You arrived earlier than I had expected, and I had to work to keep you where you wouldn’t see. And then, when I jumped,” he shuddered, “I didn’t plan for the strong wind and I clipped the edge of the truck, and fell almost directly onto the pavement. As it turned out, I only needed one of the blood bags, but at least I survived.

“After that, it was a matter of having Molly be the sole pathologist working on me,” he shrugged. “I could hold still and not breathe while Lestrade and Mycroft came to identify me. Molly kept the lab cold so I wouldn’t seem warm. I think Mycroft was suspicious, but Molly kept him busy or annoyed him with her tears until he left without checking anything for himself. He planned to come back and try again, I’m sure, but he doesn’t much like bodies and he didn’t want to see mine in particular.”

(John doesn’t often agree with Mycroft, but he’d have to hand him that one.)

“I called one of my contacts and arranged to have an empty casket buried. After that, I disappeared.”

A few of John’s questions have been answered, but a thousand more have been raised. Sherlock watched John’s face for reactions, and probably saw them all.

“Moriarty is dead. I triple-checked his body to make sure he wasn’t faking, but it’s rather hard to fake a bullet hole through your head.”

 _Oh, I don’t know,_ John thought. _You faked being dead pretty well, I bet he could too._

“In any case, he was dead but his web remained. A second-in-command was poised to continue all operations. So, I began to dismantle everything. I worked in disguises, under false names, whatever I had to do to continue to be dead and to keep everyone here safe. It was several months in before the new head man realized that his setups weren’t just being discovered by police, and that they had to have had help. He suspected me, but a few things kept him from being sure. The main one was you, John.”

“Me?” John tried to ask through the mask. It was garbled and slurred through the plastic even to his own ears, but Sherlock seemed to grasp the basic idea and continued.

“Surveillance and spies were reporting back that you were not meeting or communicating with anyone that could have been me in a disguise. Also, you were clearly not faking any… reactions. This was enough to tip them into believing that another force was destroying the business. During all their investigating of you, I finished two large drug operations and a smuggling ring. They stopped their daily watch over you but they did keep surveillance that had been secreted into the flat.”

John (reluctantly) released one of Sherlock’s hands and reached for the notepad. He scrawled the words _Is it finished?_ and showed it to Sherlock, who hesitated before answering.

“Not quite. I found and took care of the middle players. The small ones I left alone – I had no time for the mere dealers and small-time thieves, they will either stop on their own or continue with new suppliers. The one piece missing is the new command.”

 _Sebastian Moran,_ John wrote, and Sherlock nodded.

“That’s him. American ex-Marine, dishonorably discharged for who knows what – all paperwork was ‘lost’. Now a crime syndicate with a ruined empire, but still deadly. I was after him when Mycroft called me back.”

John took a deep, steadying breath, and pulled the mask from his face. The doctor in him tutted, but kept his mouth shut.

“Why did you come back?” John rasped. Sherlock’s eyes widened slightly at the tortured sound, but the rest of his face hardened.

“Oh, yes, let’s discuss this,” he growled, suddenly cold and untouchable again. “I’d assumed you would want to wait until you were somewhat healthy, but why put off the inevitable? Why did I return? Why would I come back upon hearing that John Watson, who hasn’t left our flat in weeks, has reserved a very expensive hotel room exactly one year to the day after my suicide? Why would I come back after seeing that his only online activity is purchasing bullets? Why would I cease my investigation and fly to London when Mycroft’s men found _this_ in his bag?”

Sherlock brandished John’s note and he felt the bed fall away. The only thing tethering him to the Earth was the horrifying weight of guilt in his stomach and the fury in Sherlock’s eyes.

“No addressee. Interesting, that,” Sherlock said, turning the crumpled and folded paper over and giving it his customary thorough inspection, though this time it was read with a hard edge and mounds of sarcasm. “It was obviously creased many times – you were nervous. Your pen ran out of ink here, you switched to a new one of the same colour. Your hand shook as you signed it; the recent lack of danger in your life is causing your hand tremor to return, as well as your limp. You originally wrote directly to someone, but crossed that out. Might have changed your mind because you didn’t know who would find you and read it, more likely you didn’t want to be remembered as insane for writing to a dead man.” A shell-shocked silence. “Shall we read it?”

“Sherlock, please,” John breathed. “Don’t, please.”

“’I just can’t do this anymore’,” Sherlock read, “’I hope this makes it as easy as possible to move on and forget about me. Please forgive me. I can’t,’” the ice in Sherlock’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat roughly and tried to continue. “’I can’t live without him. I don’t want to live without him. Tell Harry I’m sorry. Everything of mine is left to her and Ms Hudson. Everything of his can be left to Mycroft. Consider this my Will. I’m sorry.’”

The stunned silence of before transformed; it became anxious, pained.

“I jumped to save your life, and you were _minutes_ from throwing it away,” Sherlock rasped. “ _Why_?”

John replaced the mask for a few seconds, breathing in deeply and stalling for time simultaneously. His hand shook as he pulled the mask away again.

“I thought you were dead,” John said, voice shaking. “ _Dead_ , Sherlock. I lived with that for months, I tried to figure out what I could have done differently to help you, to keep it from happening. And then Mycroft, bloody _stupid_ Mycroft tells me that you jumped to save my skin and I just kept thinking that my life couldn’t possibly be worth it, that-that the world needs you, it doesn’t need me. How am I supposed to live with myself when I was the one that killed you?” John said all in a rush.

 _Like a bandage,_ he thought, _rip it quickly._

Sherlock didn’t answer immediately. He stood, seeming agitated, and began pacing in front of the foot of John’s bed.

“So I risk my life to save you, and you feel that you cannot handle the responsibilities that that entails,” Sherlock said, his voice an odd mixture of scathing and shaky as though he was aiming for his usual bravado and completely missed the mark. “That wasn’t supposed to be what happened. You were supposed to move on, to return to a normal life. Wife, house in the country, 2.5 kids.” He made the theory of normality seem distasteful, as if John and the remainder of the population were entirely idiots for wanting such things.

“Obviously, I had a coping problem,” John interrupted. “Apparently it’s hard for me to get over the apparent suicide and media ridicule of my best friend.”

Sherlock waved an impatient hand. “I wasn’t dead. I was coming back.”

John felt his patience snap. He was drained, and aching, and he was arguing with his once-dead, irritably, stubbornly alive flatmate about his faked death.

“Right, but _I didn’t know that._ I had to tell myself that you weren’t going to walk through that front door anymore, pulling off that scarf and that ridiculous coat. And I couldn’t handle that. So what.”

“So what?” Sherlock snorted. His pacing drew him nearer and nearer to the side of the bed once more. “So what? You had a gun packed to _kill yourself_ and you say ‘so what’. So what! What if I hadn’t made it back when I did? You’d be dead now.”

“Well you were dead then!” John shouted.

Sherlock’s face was a mask of fury. He was back to his original spot right next to John’s bedside, but now he loomed over the man in the bed rather than sitting beside him.

John felt his jaw working furiously. He had so much more to say; days, months, a _year_ of unheard words that needed their audience, but something stopped him. Sherlock didn’t speak either. Cerulean and gunmetal eyes met and locked. 

 

 

 

 

John had been months without any real physical contact. Ms. Hudson had taken to tidying and leaving him food only while he was asleep (which was often) because their conversations were solidly one-sided. Her questions went unanswered and her jokes went unacknowledged. Until waking up with her at his hospital bedside, John hadn’t really interacted with the woman in weeks, except for small phrases here and there. And he _lived_ with her; if he didn’t talk to _her_ , then what hope did others have?

But this wasn’t new – it was always like this, before. John had always enjoyed being friendly with others. He liked a night out to chat up girls or a few dates with a couple in particular. He liked pub nights with Lestrade and Stamford and the lads from rugby. He could even get along with Sally Donovan and Anderson as long as Sherlock wasn’t around. But those interactions were always lacking something; they were nice, but tedious. John just couldn’t see around the brightness of Sherlock in his life; everyone else seemed dull in comparison.

Being around Sherlock, however, was electric. It was enticing and frustrating and exhilarating and dangerous and exactly what he needed in his life. It was even comfortable, after a while. John had learned to navigate Sherlock’s moods and experiments and in return, he was able to spend countless hours with a genius who seemed to find him good company as well.

This silence that stretched between them now in this hospital room was the normal electricity quadrupled. It sparked and sang between the two men, closer in this moment than they had been in months. John felt an ache that had nothing to do with his fall, and it had settled in behind his ribs like a cat uncurling from a nap. The strange rush of desire that John had tamped down and locked away after that disastrous first “date” at Angelo’s had made a sudden reappearance. John curled his fingers around the thin wrist above the fingers clutching the bedrails. He had no plan, no point of attack, no _anything_ except that inflated rush in his bones. He began to reach toward Sherlock with his other hand when footsteps began echoing in the hallway just outside his door.

Sherlock looked sharply toward the source of the noise. The moment broken, shattered, John released his wrist and replaced the oxygen mask back over his mouth and nose.  While he settled back into what he hoped was a natural slump on his pillow, Sherlock shrugged back into his coat and crossed to the connected bathroom.

“Don’t let her come in here,” Sherlock hissed, pulling the door closed. “I can’t be seen.”

John tried to rearrange his expression back into something normal, but he had no idea what his face currently even looked like, which made things rather difficult. He decided instead to turn away from the door, so as to give himself a few more seconds to attempt to regulate his breathing, A couple of short moments later, a nurse entered.

“Hello there, Dr. Watson. Heard you shouting. Everything all right?”

The nurse (Jane, his brain supplied, reminding him of a blurry face that had been in and out of his room all day) was smiling at him. John wrote out an answer on his once-abandoned notepad.

_Nightmare. I’ll be fine. Thanks._

Jane nodded, checked his charts, read the output on a few of the machines plugged into John, and left quietly. He had a few moments of silence before Sherlock slipped out of the bathroom and back to his side. He seemed calmer, and much more tired.

“I have to go. It’s nearing dawn, and you need to sleep, and I can’t be discovered yet.” Sherlock stepped slowly backwards, watching John’s face as he moved to the door. He apparently saw something in John’s expression, because he didn’t step out immediately when his back touched the door. “I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

John nodded. He felt as though there was more that needed to be said, despite the volumes that had been spoken already. He watched Sherlock duck his head out to check the hallway, then glide silently out of the room without a backwards glance. John let out the breath he’d been holding and clenched the sheet around his waist, knowing already that sleep would be impossible. A soft click at the door startled him, and he looked back up to see his mad flatmate sneaking back into his room.

“One more thing, because this was troubling me the entire time I was in the bathroom,” Sherlock said, striding over and taking John’s hand once more and squeezing so hard it began to ache. “Don’t you ever think your life is not worth continuing. No matter the price paid, you are worth it.”

John had no time to formulate a response before Sherlock was back out the door, leaving him to a quiet room and his loud thoughts. 

 

 

 

 

John spent a week in the hospital. He was healing, but it was a long process, slowed by his malnutrition and general lack of personal care of the past few months. Harry, Ms Hudson, and Sherlock came to see him every day (Sherlock only in the dead of night, but he still came), and everyone else John cared about came by at least once.

“Just to check up,” Molly had said cheerfully when she visited. She had smuggled in some tea from her shop, and John could bloody well kiss her for it.

Course, that could be all those residual hormones that had bubbled up after Sherlock’s miraculous reappearance.

John had never really dealt with rejection. Across three continents and various countries, he’d had his conquests throughout university and while serving in the military. He’d not been turned down since Amy Fisher refused to be his girlfriend when they were ten years old because he’d pulled her pigtails too hard on the playground. John knew how to shoot within his boundaries, to work a girl (or guy, depending on his mood and the man in question) with jokes and his general friendliness until he could get her (or him) to come home. Even right away rejections could be worn down and cajoled into eventual acceptances.

John had never dealt with rejection, and he didn’t want to start now. Every night, when the glaring fluorescent lights in the hallway outside his door were dimmed, a lanky shadow would slink in and pace at the foot of John’s bed. Sometimes Sherlock began talking immediately, spouting bits of information he’d uncovered regarding Moran or follow-up reports on the operations he’d already shut down. Sometimes Sherlock was silent, physically by John’s bedside but mentally miles away. John asked questions when he thought of them, but mostly he just let Sherlock be.

But every time, in the early morning hours slowly creeping towards dawn, Sherlock would stand, brush and straighten his clothing, and spout some variant of “Be back tomorrow,” but before he left he would grasp John’s hand, squeeze it tight, and shoot him a look that went straight to his gut.

And no matter what, no matter how hard John tried to think of the wreck that Sherlock had made of his life, of his rudeness, of his coarseness and his carelessness and his unpredictability, John couldn’t get over that gut feeling.

It wasn’t strictly desire for anything carnal. No matter how appealing the idea was to get out of this damned hospital bed to throw the world’s only consulting detective up against a wall and kiss him so hard he’d forget every  deduction he ever made, that was only a tiny piece of it. (A very loud, obnoxious piece, but a tiny piece nonetheless.) The desire was multifold and confusing. John wanted his relationship with Sherlock to evolve, but he also wanted it to stay the same way it had been before. He wanted to be able to kiss the man whenever he felt the urge, he wanted in on Sherlock’s deepest secrets, he wanted that step further away from friendship and into a new territory. But he also wanted to retain what was already possible; he wanted the casual touches without fear of misunderstanding, feet propped across John’s legs when he tried to share the sofa with the gangly detective, the inside jokes and inappropriate black humor, the tea and the body parts in the fridge and the best friendship he’d ever had.

They pulled him back and forth, these two mighty and stubborn needs. Neither side gave an inch. John spent the time between Harry’s none-too-subtle bragging (“Look at this, I’m clean, I’m getting back with Clara, I’ve got a good job. And Perfect Prince Johnny is starving himself and getting spooked over nothing. What a turnabout!”) and Ms. Hudson’s handwringing (“Oh, dear, I should have known you weren’t eating enough, I thought you were getting over that dreadful business, you were going on holiday soon, weren’t you?”) to puzzle out his newfound desires and consider pros and cons of each side.

It all came down to that year, John decided. With constant time spent with Sherlock before the fall, it became simple for John to push down his urges or to forget about them completely. The man usually made it easy; insulting clients and Anderson, sinking into bouts of anger-infused depression between cases, random chemical explosions that left the flat uninhabitable for days. Even the lost year had been spent mourning Sherlock in a purely platonic way. It was this sudden knowledge that he was _alive_ that made things shine in a new light. How could John be content to tamp down any feelings when it had been clearly proven that the time he has with Sherlock was limited and he could be taken from him at any time?

Yet, at the same time, how could he risk the one thing that made him happy when the attempt to further things could chase Sherlock away?

What could he do?

It didn’t help that he couldn’t think it through while Sherlock was there. All his concentration was spent keeping his hands to himself and not blurting out embarrassing things like “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me” and “I’m pretty sure I love you but I also might just want to just be friends.” John wondered where Sherlock spent the hours he wasn’t wearing holes in the linoleum in his hospital room. He offered Baker Street as a place for the once-detective to rest, but he was quickly rejected with an errant flick of the hand.

“Can’t. It’s bugged, remember. Besides,” he shot John a strange look, “you aren’t there.”

And then John couldn’t talk for the rest of the night, because he was attempting to regulate his heart rate and keep the blush off his cheeks.

The various questions and scenarios chased each other through John’s tired mind during every minute not spent sleeping or talking with visitors. His only relief came eight days after his impromptu hospital stay began; John was being allowed to go home. Dr Woods was unhappy with the situation, but as John was a doctor and seemed to have a decent support system in place (including a very persuasive and rather intimidating Mycroft Holmes) he let him go, though he would have to come back within the fortnight for a check on the improvement of his eating habits and the healing of his fingers and knee.

Home. Baker Street.

One humiliating ride in a wheelchair out to the plain black sedan idling at the door, and John was finally able to escape the whirling chaos inside his head and concentrate on something else, anything else. He watched cars fly by, he counted dogs on the pavement, he sang along to the radio. (Somewhere around the fourth or fifth time Mycroft kidnapped him, John had discovered that the backseat had controls to the radio, and he liked to blast loud, obnoxious pop just to see if the driver would react. So far, nothing, but John still tried.) Anything to keep his mind off the Sherlock Problem.

The black door of 221B greeted him like an old friend. He smiled, reached for his cane, and hobbled his way inside and up the stairs. Ms Hudson was there to settle him in, bringing him a cup of tea and some soup (“And it had better get eaten, John Watson, so help me.”) and tidying until she finally deemed the place appropriate and left him alone. The buzz of silence filled his head until he just couldn’t stand it. He stood to take his dishes to the sink (bowl scraped clean, food completely eaten) and stopped in the doorway to the living room.

_What to do, what to do… Something. Anything._

His phone grabbed his attention. No one had brought it to the hospital for him, and he hadn’t asked for it. There was no need. There was more contact with his remaining friends and family in the last week than he’d had with anyone in months. He was surprised, then, to see one new message awaiting him.

He was even more surprised when he realized that this wasn’t his phone. Same model, same generic background, same ringtones programmed in. But John flipped over the phone to see the engraving was altered. It now read:

_To J - from Ken xoxo_

Ken? What in the hell? John stared at the phone in bewilderment. He turned it over to check the message.

_(1)_ _New Message_

_Hey Johnny! We need to meet up, been too long! Maybe I’ll run into you where we first met. How’s Tuesday at 8 p.m. sound? – Ken_

Ken again. John was completely baffled. Who on God’s green Earth was Ken? And where was John’s real phone? For the first time in years, he was confused because of something that had nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes.

John sat and stared at his phone, alternating between studying the message and flipping over to read the engraving.

Ken. Ken? Ken…

John cast his eyes around the room, desperate for help, but completely lost on how to contact Sherlock to puzzle out this mystery.

Ken…

His eyes landed on the mantelpiece, the jumbled, homey mess of bills stabbed with Sherlock’s penknife and the skull, grinning at him.

_Kensington._

(“It’s really not that funny, John. Kensington is a family name, and perfectly normal.”

 “Yeah well your family uses names like Mycroft and Sherlock, that doesn’t make anything normal.”

 “Really, John. Your sense of humor is immature at best.”

 “You laugh at crime scenes, Kenny. Your sense of humor is just as bad.”

 “Do _not_ call me Kenny.”)

John reread the text, considering it as if Sherlock had written it as one of his characters. _Where we first met, Tuesday at 8:00_.

So, okay, Molly’s at 8:00. And it was Tuesday, so that gave him… _shit,_ half an hour.

John leapt to his feet and jogged down the stairs. He stopped to briefly throw an excuse at Ms Hudson, telling her to call him if she needed him, and headed out the door.

Twenty-five minutes later, John was wiping his feet on the welcome mat outside Molly’s (out of sheer force of habit) and trying the door. It was locked, so he knocked, three quick raps on the smudged glass.

“Come in, John,” Molly’s quiet voice welcomed him. He could barely see her in the gloomy light of the nearest streetlamp, but she looked shaky and nervous. Either something was wrong, or Sherlock was here. Maybe both.

John edged inside. None of the shop lights were on, so he concentrated on following Molly’s white shirt as she led him to the back room. He expected to be led to a storeroom of sorts, bags of coffee beans and baking ingredients stacked to the ceiling, or maybe a kitchen.

 _Stupid,_ John thought, faintly amused that the voice sounded like Sherlock, _never theorize without all available data._

It probably used to be a storeroom, but Sherlock had clearly taken it over. Three television screens showed CCTV feeds from across London. A fourth screen clearly showed alternating shots of the inside of Baker Street. (John’s stomach twisted slightly at the sight.) Two laptops sat side by side at one end of a table in the middle of the room, and a large microscope was at the other end with piles of paper in-between. A giant map overtook one wall, stuck with multicoloured pins with string wound in what must be some kind of trail. The map was ringed by newspaper clippings, surveillance photos, and one large mugshot of Sebastian Moran, the same that still adorned the wall back at Baker Street. Papers were on every available surface. A tiny burgundy sofa was shoved into the darkest corner, clearly an afterthought compared to the investigation. Near the sofa were a few small, battered boxes. And there was Sherlock, walking a path he’d clearly traced dozens of times, back and forth in front of the map. He looked up to nod at John and Molly.

“Evening. Glad you got the message.”

"Yeah, I did, yeah,” John answered. He lapsed into silence for a moment. “So this is where you’ve been the whole time?”

If he said yes, John might finally have had to punch him. He hadn’t yet, but there had been some near misses. This might have been the final straw. 

“No, of course not. Moriarty’s web was all throughout the world, I couldn’t have done all the work from London. I’ve been staying here only since the night I came to see you at the flat.”

John released the breath he’d been holding. Near miss, that one.

“So why didn’t you just come to the flat? Could’ve set up in your old room, had plenty more space.”

Sherlock gave him a look that he both loathed and valued, the how-do-you-walk-and-breathe-at-the-same-time look. “I’ve _told_ you, it’s bugged. I can’t be seen, and they’ll especially be looking for me there. They’re probably already suspicious from you dashing out of the flat when you just got back from the hospital.” He gestured to the screen displaying Baker Street, showing Molly’s chair and some of the kitchen.

“But… you’ve been in the flat already. Do you think he wasn’t looking that night?” John was (eternally) confused.

“After you went to bed that night, I installed a video systems eraser that I had created. It would rewind back to five minutes previous, and erase that five minutes of video. It then allowed nothing to be recorded from that night, and it just showed continual footage of an empty living room, so they’d assume you were still in bed. Unless someone was watching that particular screen at that particular second of time, among all the other surveillance footage that I’m sure they’re hacking into, no one could ever know that anything was amiss. After the ambulance came to pick you up, I turned the system off, which again gave me five minutes to get out before it started showing real time footage again.”

“That’s brilliant, Sherlock,” John said, unable to help himself. Sherlock smirked back.

“Um, tea?” Molly’s small voice pierced through the room. John jumped. He had completely forgotten she was even there. He accepted the mug with a small “thank you” and sipped slowly. His stomach still couldn’t handle too much, shrunk from months of surviving off tiny bits of food, so the soup and previous cup of tea were still settled heavily in his belly. That realization caused him to waver with sudden sleepiness. Sherlock noticed, of course, and pushed him to the sofa.

“Keep off your feet. You are still recovering, after all.” Sherlock rearranged some pillows and helped lower John onto the rather comfy seat. Molly wavered helpfully at his elbow, but he shooed her back. “We’re fine, Molly. Go on to bed, I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You sleep here?” John asked, yawning widely.

“Upstairs,” Molly answered, pointing upward. “There’s a small flat up there. When I bought the shop, I bought the flat too, and sold my old one. That way I’m just upstairs if they need me, and it’s a shorter commute to Bart’s. Works all around,” she said, smiling. She excused herself and shut the door gently behind her, lock clicking loudly in the trailing quiet. John glanced up to see Sherlock back to staring at the evidence wall.

“Won’t you need somewhere to sleep?”

“Not sleeping tonight.”

John felt himself sinking into slumber, but one thought pushed its way to the forefront of his mind, and he began to giggle.

“Are you just sleep deprived, or on medication?” Sherlock asked distractedly.

“Neither, I’m just…” John chuckled throatily, unconsciousness already pulling at the edges of his vision. “I’m calling you Ken from now on.”

Sherlock didn’t laugh, but he didn’t scoff either, and John was pretty sure he saw one corner of Sherlock’s mouth turn up in that lopsided smile of his.

“Good night, John.”

“G’night, Sherlock.”

 

 

 

 

John spent the next week and a half cooped up with Sherlock Holmes ( _alive, he’s alive_ ) in that tiny room. He only slept there the once, though, as Sherlock insisted he should be seen by the surveillance at least once a day, and it would only make sense for him to sleep at home so soon after a hospital stay.

“You have to pretend everything is back to the way it was,” Sherlock instructed. “They can’t know I’m here. So you have to act exactly as you would have two weeks ago, before I returned. Pretend you’re attempting to get back on track, going to work, meeting Lestrade or Harriet, whatever it is you would do. Don’t tell Ms. Hudson anything. No one can know.”

“Do you think they suspect you’re here?” John asked.

“I don’t know. I’m sure his headquarters is somewhere nearby, as all business seems to be London-based, but I can’t find his surveillance system to latch onto their network. I find that, I can see everything they see, but until then, I’m flying blind. For all I know, they might still think I’m dead. Or, they might know so much that they followed my progress to London. I just don’t know.”

“So, those aren’t his cameras?” John asked, gesturing to the screen showing Baker Street. Sherlock shook his head.

“No, those are Mycroft’s.” John’s stomach churned in shame. Even worse. He didn’t really care what the opinion of a criminal magnate would be of him, but to think of Mycroft watching his slow downward spiral was an awful thing. And, if John knew Sherlock like he thought he did, video was probably sent to him as well to confirm his need to return to London. John looked up to meet Sherlock’s stare, which was set in a face that seemed to be admitting that was exactly what happened. Sherlock raised one eyebrow, and John turned away to shuffle at papers and attempt to find a new distraction.

So John spent his nights tossing and turning alone at the flat and his days with Sherlock. He wasn’t much help, mostly he was the sounding board and the encouragement as Sherlock hunted down any trace of Moran. But Sherlock was in fine form, making leaps that he could have never made before, connecting dots more rapidly than John had ever seen him do. When John asked about it, Sherlock merely shrugged.

“Working on my own, with limited technology, having to stay undetected… It helped sharpen my deductive skills. I had to learn to see things and remember things without the aid of others, any others. I could rely on no one but myself.”

John tried to be mostly quiet while Sherlock was thinking, but there was so much John wanted to know. So he’d wait until Sherlock’s eyes weren’t blurry or unfocused, or for Molly to interrupt first. Once he was mostly sure that Sherlock wouldn’t snap at him for disrupting his train of thought, he’d ask his questions or voice his comments.

“I used to think I saw you everywhere,” he mused once, laying on his back on the sofa and staring at the ceiling. “You know. After.”

“It wasn’t me,” Sherlock answered distractedly, shuffling through papers. “I was in Russia much of the first month, then Iran for three weeks after that.”

“What were you doing in Iran?” John asked.

“Drug ring based out of Tehran.”

“Oh.”

Later, John tried a new train of thought.

“So where did you hide that video thing you snuck in?”

“Under the skull,” Sherlock said. He was quiet a moment, then he spoke up again. “His jaw was taped.”

“Ah. Yeah. Got mad.”

Sherlock flicked his eyes up, and smiled a tiny smile.

“You fixed him with masking tape.”

“Yeah. I did.”

“You also called him _Kensington_.”

John burst out laughing.

“That’s not changing, either. One of the few things from the bad year that I’m keeping the same,” he chuckled. Sherlock frowned and flicked a rubber band at him.

A few days later, Sherlock was ranting about Mycroft.

“Doesn’t know when to keep his _fat nose_ out of my business,” he raged, downing his newest cup of coffee and tossing the mug onto the table. “Best part of my year away was only seeing him twice. He’s so _infuriating_.”

“You saw him twice?” John asked, hoping to draw him away from the imminent black mood.

“Yes. You were there, the second time.” John surveyed him, one skeptical eyebrow lifted.

“I think I’d remember that, Sherlock. I’ve only been to Mycroft’s office a grand total of five times, and you were there for none of them.”

“Yes I was,” Sherlock insisted, ruffling his wild hair. “That time you came to ask him to let you in on the Moran hunt.”

John tried to remember that day around the black hole of absolute depression that spiraled after that fateful trip to Mycroft’s. He recalled a sweaty, flustered Mycroft, a shouted argument barely heard through the door, a mysterious caller on “speakerphone.”

“That was you on the phone?” John asked incredulously.

“No, of course not. You know I prefer to text. Mycroft has a secret room behind one of his wall panels, I hid in there.” He smirked over his shoulder at John before he resumed his pacing. “I did not, as you asked that day, jump out the window.”

John laughed once. “So you…”

“Yes, that was me that made the noise. Mycroft really is awful with cover stories off the top of his head.”

“You’re one to laugh,” John pointed out. “Kicking wall panels when you’re supposed to be hiding.”

“I kicked it trying to shift so I could see Mycroft’s stupid face when you insulted his team,” Sherlock grinned at the memory.  John laughed again and went back to the maps in front of him. He stopped, however, when he realized something that made his stomach turn.

“You were right there,” John said softly, not looking up from the map of the greater Beijing area. As quiet as he said it, he still saw Sherlock look up sharply. “Right in the same room. If I’d have known…”

“You couldn’t, John. They’d have killed you.”

“I know.” John swallowed and smiled weakly at his best friend. “It’s just a hard thing to realise.”

Sherlock didn’t say anything, but he sat down across the table from John and bumped the doctor with his knees anytime he was quiet for too long, and John knew he felt the same way. 

 

 

 

 

So John spent a week in that tiny room, listening and encouraging and questioning, hoping to send Sherlock thinking in the right direction, but they’d seemed to have hit a wall. Three sightings of Moran within a 24 hour period, in three distinct places: one in Shanghai, one in Chiswick, one in New York. Sherlock pulled at his hair in frustration.

“It’s not possible!” he snarled. John studied the picture of the man over tented fingers pressed to his mouth.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Run me through his details again.”

“Born and raised in Louisiana, in the States,” Sherlock recited. “Joined the United States Marine Corp on his eighteenth birthday. Served until age 23, which was 1999. Dishonourably discharged, but there’s no record of that other than the actual discharge, no details on what he did. All paperwork on him has disappeared, probably thanks to Moriarty. Seemed to have joined a large drug ring that based out of the American South in 2000, was arrested for possession with intent to distribute after about a year. Served eleven months in prison, then moved immediately to London and joined with Moriarty in about 2002. No record exists after that, except for brief surveillance footage. Last known location was London, up until these latest images arrived.” Sherlock exhaled, then sat hard on the sofa with a loud thump.

“If no record exists, and we’re pretty sure Moriarty has deleted at least some of his information, how do we know he still looks like this?” John asked, indicating the picture. “He probably isn’t a master of disguise or anything, but if I was thinking that Sherlock Holmes was possibly looking for me, I’d try and look different.”

Sherlock hummed distractedly. “I’d agree that that’s avenue to investigate, except he looks the same in the all the newest surveillance footage.”

John sighed and turned back around to read some more newspaper articles, until he heard a soft inhale and one quiet word:

“Except…”

And then Sherlock was right there, throwing the newspapers to the floor and laying out the three enhanced photos in front of John.

“Ignore the surroundings, they don’t matter. Focus on the man. What can you see?”

John leaned close to the pictures, heart racing at the sudden possibility for discovery and also possibly because Sherlock was _right there_. He studied each of the faces in turn, taking the time to match each with the mugshot on the wall. He finally spotted a difference, and pointed excitedly.

“The lip scar,” he said. Sherlock beamed and nodded vigorously.

“Exactly. On second glance, the scar on the Moran in Chiswick is lighter in colour. That could be just a lighting or camera problem, except that on further inspection, the one in Chiswick also has shorter hair than the other two. He’s also,” Sherlock demonstrated with a quick poke, “wearing American military identification tags, but not in the other two.”

“So, there were two fake Morans? To throw us off?”

“I believe so, yes. Which means… he knows someone is watching. He may not know who, but he is aware at least of some surveillance.” Sherlock looked up to meet John’s gaze. “I think we should stay together tonight. Probably here. The one with the military haircut and tags was the one in Chiswick, so I’m sure that means the real one is here, in London. And if he’s taking the time to plant body doubles in cities across the world, then he probably isn’t constantly monitoring his own cameras. His number of helpers is quite diminished, and I don’t think he’ll be concentrating on anything but building up defenses now. ”

John agreed to stay, immensely glad that he had taken to bringing the Sig with him to Molly’s every day, just in case. (Sherlock still had that tendency to attract danger, even while supposedly dead.) This major three-day, three-patch problem solved, they settled in for a long night of planning, both defensive and offensive strategies. Molly popped in occasionally with food and drink, asking about their progress but seeming unruffled when they didn’t give details.

“I think we should plan an attack for within the next week,” Sherlock said. John rubbed his eyes and looked up, glancing at the clock (nearing midnight) before looking at Sherlock. His friend’s eyes were red from lack of sleep, and his hair was absolutely rumpled.

“Next week?” John repeated.

“Yes. We’ll have Mycroft watching all CCTV networks for any sign of him. He’ll tell us where he’s been seen, and we go immediately. If we need disguises, I’ve got enough here that we could use. And I picked up my own gun, as well.” He indicated the battered boxes beside the couch.

“Not a very foolproof plan,” John muttered.

“No, it’s not. But drawing it out won’t help us any, as you’re mostly healed. You aren’t even using your cane anymore.”

John looked around automatically, and started laughing when he remembered passing his cane where it was propped against the wall of the flat as he was leaving that morning.

“You haven’t brought it in days,” Sherlock chuckled. “You’re welcome, again.”

“Oh, shove it,” John giggled.

It was fantastic, this carefree moment in the utter calm before the calamity. Of course, peace doesn’t last long for either John Watson or Sherlock Holmes, so as the laughter died down they heard the shattering of a window in the shop outside their storage room’s door. Loud footsteps crunched across glass and a deep voice boomed out in the stillness.

“Come out, come out wherever you are!”

So much for mounting an offensive against Moran.

He had come to them first.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh! Another cliffhanger! Sorry sorry sorry. Look for part three within the next week.


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence in this chapter, so be prepared for that. 
> 
> As always, thanks to the lovely Ruth for wrangling my ideas into proper stories. All mistakes are my own, and let me know if you catch some so I can correct them.

Sherlock and John were pretty effectively trapped. They knew Moran was outside the shop, but beyond that, they had no information. They were currently huddling behind the empty glass case that usually held desserts, holding their collective breath and trying to not to flinch every time Moran loosed another shot. He didn’t really seem to be aiming for anything, but items on the shelves kept cracking and falling and the shelves in question kept being knocked to the ground.

“Do you see him?” John muttered. Sherlock shook his head.

“No, but…” and then he groaned slightly, dropping his head to the glass case and muttering a soft, rare curse. “ _Molly._ ” John whipped around to see Molly Hooper at the foot of her stairs, clutching a cat (Toby, John remembered in a horrible moment of clarity) in one hand and a pink can of pepper spray in the other. Her hair was a disheveled mess and her pajamas had cartoon cats on them. She made a quick scan and her eyes widened when she saw Sherlock and John crouched behind her counter. 

“What-“ she started, but she couldn’t finish because another large _crack_ rang through the room. Molly’s eyes were squeezed shut, but she was still standing, and she appeared unharmed. A bullet was imbedded in the wall a foot away from her tiny torso.

“Go, Molly,” John whisper-shouted. “ _Get back upstairs!”_ She squeaked, turned, and ran. Toby meowed loudly in her arms and her pink slippers clapped on each stair, drawing even more attention onto her, but at least she’d be safe for a while.

John felt the awful tug of despair as he considered all the unknowns; was Moran on his own, or did he bring backup? The bullet stuck in Molly’s wall was that out of a high-powered rifle (John knew guns, but not well enough to distinguish an exact rifle type from a hole in a wall), not meant for safety like John’s and Sherlock’s pistols, but one to provoke an image of power. But was he otherwise armed?

First things first: they needed to get out from behind the glass dessert case. Glass shrapnel could be just as damaging as metal, and was much worse than wood, so John shifted his Sig to his right hand and reached behind him with his left. He pinched Sherlock’s shirt sleeve and pulled him silently along behind him. Ducking for cover, John led his friend to behind the nearest bookshelf. He let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding when he got there, and turned to look back at Sherlock. The detective was scanning the room through the shelves.

“He’s alone. Carrying an American military-issue rifle. Pretty high-powered. He missed Molly on purpose; he’s a sniper, a short range shot would have been no problem, which means he wants us alive.” Sherlock didn’t seem scared, but his heartbeat was thumping forcibly and John could feel it even through his sleeve. “If he wanted us dead, he would have just shot her, which would have provoked one if not both of us to blow our cover and immediately attack him. He let her live, so he wants us captured, alive. Of course, he will still probably kill us, but not until he’s tortured us for ruining his empire.”

“Always a bright side,” John whispered cheerfully.

Whoever could look at Sherlock and see a sociopath (including Sherlock himself) should have been subject to a knock to the back of the head. Sherlock’s fear, usually so well hidden or even nonexistent, was clearly for the scared pathologist/coffeeshop owner/cat lover upstairs, rather than for themselves. They could handle the situation; they’d done it plenty of times before, even if they were (a bit) out of practice.

Sherlock’s fear sent a thrill of real terror and a crashing wave of adrenaline through John’s body. But there was also that uncurled cat feeling – that _he’s alive and he’s here and he’s saving people again_ feeling.

“If he’s alone, how will he capture us?” John asked.

“Oh, he’s got accomplices, probably on the way, but he’s alone on the ground right now.”

“So what’s our plan, Sherlock?”

Sherlock answered by smiling his half-smile and cocking his gun. John felt a maniacal grin cross his face and did the same.

“Congrats, you found us,” Sherlock called, voice low but clear throughout the now-still night. “Now what? Are we to accompany you to your designated torture area now, or are we supposed to fight for a while to give you something fun for you to focus on?”

A cold chuckle, a bullet loaded into a chamber, footsteps on shattered glass.

“Nice to meet you, Mr Holmes. You’ve been causing me a lot of problems, lately.” The voice drifted towards them from outside the shop; he was shooting in from out on the street. Moran continued his introduction. “I’d like some payback for that. That’s why I’m here.”

“Revenge, dull,” Sherlock scoffed. This seemed to anger Moran – a moment of silence was followed by a crack, and the shelf to their left fell backwards on impact.

“We need to get to where we can see him,” John said. Sherlock nodded to the shelf next to the window.

“We’ll get a clear visual from there,” Sherlock murmured. John reached back again, and rather than finding Sherlock’s sleeve again, he got his hand. He made to lead the way out of the relative safety behind their current shelf but Sherlock tugged him back.

“John, we need to be careful. Just because his motivations are boring does not mean he is stupid. After Moriarty, he’s the most dangerous man we’ve dealt with. And now, he’s behaving irrationally out of anger. Don’t do anything…” he smirked slightly, “idiotic.” John nodded, ignoring the idiot remark, and pulled the detective behind him to cross surreptitiously to the target bookshelf.

It was at this moment that Moran decided he had had enough of quiet and relative calm and fired four more quick shots into the shop. John ducked and covered his head as the remaining front window was destroyed. Three shelves were blown down across the store, including the one next to Molly’s door, trapping her upstairs, as well as the one they were creeping toward. And almost simultaneously, Sherlock gasped loudly and fell, clutching his arm.

“Sherlock!” John hissed. He didn’t turn to look, just yanked the man forward two more paces to drop behind the now overturned shelf nearest the busted window. He peered out to the street, finding it deserted. Moran had either made his way inside the shop, or was hiding. He listened closely for a few seconds and didn’t hear any footsteps or sounds of a gun being reloaded, so he turned to assess Sherlock’s damage.

Blood stained the white of his shirt, flowing from several small wounds adorning his chest and left arm, which he’d thrown up to shield his eyes. Most of the cuts were long but shallow, and definitely manageable, so John dismissed them for the moment. His eyes were drawn to Sherlock’s forearm. A large shard of glass was embedded through the soft underside of his arm, piercing so completely through that John could see the point breaking through the skin of the opposite side.

“I need to get that out,” John cautioned in his calmest doctor voice, reaching for the glass. Sherlock’s face was drawn, but he nodded. “Count of three, then,” John grasped the shard, “One, two-“ and he pulled it out in one swift movement. Sherlock groaned, sound muffled through John’s palm that he’d clapped over his mouth. John let his surgeon instincts take over and he quickly ripped off the bottom three inches of Sherlock’s long shirt, wrapping it tightly around the laceration.

The store was quiet, but John didn’t trust it.

He glanced over the rim of the overturned bookshelf hiding them from the madman. Sherlock leaned back next to him, panting. John sat back down, adjusting his grip on the pistol in his hands. A sudden plan leapt to his mind. Sherlock needed medical attention – not immediately, but soon enough. Molly was trapped upstairs, but she would be able to stitch him up if only John could draw the gunman out. The sudden quiet provided John with the last bit of courage, and he suddenly reached out to grip Sherlock by his shirt collar. The Sig pressed against Sherlock’s jaw, but he didn’t seem frightened. His breathing was harsh, but that was probably more due to stress and a hole in his arm than anything else.

“I’m only going to say this once, so listen up,” John whispered raggedly. Sherlock’s eyes were unwavering from his. His right hand was clutching his left arm, his chest was heaving. He was here and _alive_ and John couldn’t keep him anywhere near danger for any longer. “It’s been the absolute privilege of my life to be your best friend, Sherlock Holmes. I’ve killed for you, and I’m prepared to die for you.”

“John-“ Sherlock gasped, suddenly gripping John’s wrist with iron intensity.

“Shut up. Let me talk. You stay here. Let Molly fix you up. The GPS on my phone is turned on, once you’re patched up, come and find me. And just know…”

“Yes?” Sherlock asked, voice rough.

John drew up one last bit of nerve, “Just know that if we make it out of this alive, I’m going to marry you, you great idiot.”

And John leaned forward and kissed Sherlock, finally kissed him. It was short and hard and bruising and the best idea that John had ever had, but then he had to wrench himself away or he’d never leave. So he met those icy eyes, blown wide open, and grabbed that face with his right hand (pointing the Sig away so he didn’t accidentally kill the man when he _finally_ got the opportunity to kiss him) and put his forehead against Sherlock’s.

“Stay hidden until he’s gone,” John commanded. “Don’t die on me now.”

The adrenaline pumping through his veins propelled him up and through the mostly shattered window. He sprinted across to the nearest darkened alleyway, judging his best options.

“We’re right here!” he shouted. “Come get us!” And he sprinted down the alley, overturning bins and making as much noise as humanly possible, drawing Moran away from Sherlock and into a wild goose chase through backyards and down side streets. He smirked when he heard pounding footsteps behind him, glad that at least one plan was working out for them tonight. He laughed out loud, giggling maniacally until he took a bad step and his already tender knee popped horribly. He hit the ground with a crash, rolling into a defensive position and knowing automatically that there would be no way he’d be running anymore tonight.

Suddenly, Moran was there, looming over him and cackling. He didn’t say a word, but he did produce a syringe from an inside coat pocket and plunged it mercilessly into John’s neck. John’s last thought before floating into the awful black of oblivion was the feeling of Sherlock’s lips on his, and how even this pain was worth that short moment of happiness.   

 

 

 

 

John woke up on the rooftop at Bart’s. He was strapped to a chair, which had front legs that were still on solid rooftop but back legs that were suspended over a very familiar street. The only things that kept John from falling were massively large hands on either side, keeping him propped awkwardly but somewhat safely on the edge of the roof. John looked up to meet the two men holding him from death.

“So, there actually were three of you,” John said conversationally. The two men on either side of his chair were almost identical replicas to Sebastian Moran. The only differences were the ones discovered by Sherlock and John earlier (had it only been a few hours? It felt like days) – lack of ID tags, slightly longer hair, no lip scars. Up close, John could discern a few more key variances: the one on his left had darker hair than the real Moran or the other imposter, and the one on his right had a small, barely hidden upper arm tattoo.

But other than that, they were so scarily alike that had to be twins, or at least brothers.

Arm Tattoo shifted, and John felt the chair slip slightly. “How long’re we s’posed to be up here?”

“Dunno,” Dark Hair replied. “Shut up, he’ll be here when he gets here.”

American accents. The brother theory was looking better and better. The roof door was thrown open, and the real Moran strode across the distance between them, grinning.

“Ah, John. Good to see you up and at ‘em. See you’ve met my brothers.” He nodded to the two men. “Well, half-brothers. Stan and Mac.”

“Nice to meet you,” John grinned up at Arm Tattoo, who frowned back.

“Snarky little thing, ain’t he?”

Moran ignored him in favor of staring at John. It was slightly reminiscent of Moriarty’s dead stare, and John fought a shiver.

“You’ve thrown quite a wrench in all my plans, Dr Watson. I had it all set up. There’s a room I got, not telling you where, course, but I got one.” He grinned and moved to crouch right in front of John’s chair. “All set up with all the toys, been collecting for a while just for today. I was going to draw it all out, let you get so bad you’d beg for death, but I wouldn’t let you have it ‘til you was good and ready. But maybe this is better.”

He was quiet for a moment, but John didn’t feel the need to chatter. He’d learned a lot since Shan kidnapped him and threatened his date with Chinese circus equipment; he’d been abducted enough now to know it did no good to panic. He took in a breath and met Moran’s concentrated stare.

“See, that other way, I’d get to play with you, but you’d have Mr Holmes with you through it all,” he continued. “Til death do you part, or whatever it is you Brits say. You’d feel the need to be all brave for your little boyfriend. But like this, oh, this is like poetry. You’ll have to sit and watch as Sherlock watches you fall to your death, just like you did. But this one won’t be fake.”

Oh God. John fought to keep his face blank.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” John said. “And it might slow him down for a moment but he’ll still find you.”

It was a very poor bluff. Moran’s face split into a wide, horrifying smile.

“I’m hoping for that, Watson. Then I’ll still get to try out that room and he won’t have anyone holding his hand through it all. And I know he’s your boyfriend, I’ve been watching you. Cute little text he sent you earlier. As if we I couldn’t put two and two together, a mysterious “Ken” and you calling that skull Kensington all the time. Wasn’t a difficult leap, that one.”

  
“So now what?” John asked, clearing his traitorous throat.

“Now we wait,” Moran answered. “No good having a show without an audience. And you,” he snarled, “need to shut up.” He produced a filthy sloth from his pocket, and John was gagged.

Several minutes passed, then a few more. Moran grew restless, taking to pacing first in front of John’s chair, and then around the edge of the roof. He pulled a long, wickedly curved knife from a hilt on his belt and began examining it.

“Why isn’t he here yet?” he finally growled when the darkness began seeping out of the night to be replaced by a watery sunrise, glaring at John as if it was his fault. He shrugged in return, or at least attempted to shrug against the bonds holding him onto the chair. Moran stopped in his tracks and turned to scrutinize John. “You’re his one weakness, everyone knows that. But… he isn’t here yet. Maybe things have changed,” he mused.

“Things have changed,” a voice agreed. Moran whipped around to meet the barrel of a Browning pistol pointed in his direction, held steady in Sherlock’s two-handed grip. He didn’t look hurt at all, dressed in a different, clean white shirt ( _If that’s what took so long,_ John thought, _I’ll kill him myself_ ). The only sign that pointed toward anything less than perfect health was the bruise forming under his eye. He looked unruffled, unconcerned, and absolutely above the entire ordeal. “Of course they have. I spent a year away from London, and I didn’t spend that entire time pining for an old army doctor with a bad leg. I let Jim and the rest of the criminals assume that he was my weakness, but I have no such thing. Throw him off the roof if it makes you feel more powerful, it makes no difference to me.”

John felt bile rise in his throat. He tried to convince himself that this was just a bluff, that Sherlock was happy to be home, that he cared if John was thrown off the roof. But Sherlock’s gaze was latched onto Moran’s – the prize puzzle piece caught at last, and John and the two brothers could have tap-danced right off the edge and Sherlock probably wouldn’t have looked away.

_I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I'm flattered by your interest…_

Oh God. He should have known. And, _hell_ , he’d made such an absolute _fool_ of himself back in the shop. He should have pieced it together. Sherlock needed him only as a shield and a gun at the end of an arm, to make him tea and to prove a point at crime scenes, not for anything else. He hadn’t even apologized for leaving John alone and almost suicidal for a full year. If John’s hands weren’t bound, he’d be throttling himself right now. It was all so _obvious_.

“Well that takes all the fun out of it,” Moran complained. “What good is it all if it won’t rattle you?” Sherlock merely raised an eyebrow. John wanted to punch that disdainful look right off his face. Here he was, about to get tossed off a roof, and the bloody man wasn’t going to bat an eyelash.

“What now, then?” Dark Hair asked. (John still hadn’t puzzled out who was Stan and who was Mac. Did it really matter, in the long run?)

“I guess we throw him anyway. No good having a straggler,” Moran said. John’s stomach clenched. _Here we go, then._

Sherlock finally looked past Moran and met John’s furious stare. He looked supremely unconcerned; a god among mortals who was thoroughly bored with the proceedings.

“Vatican cameos,” Sherlock said calmly. It took John a moment, as Sherlock had said it in the most average of voices that it seemed as if he was just continuing a conversation. But the words hit, and John moved instinctively. He shoved his feet as far back under the chair as they would go, and kicked himself forward while throwing all his body weight away from the edge. Luckily, Stan and Mac had been so interested in the exchange that their grips had loosened, and John was able to shove himself away from imminent death. He heard one gunshot above him, but he had no sense of any developments with his face squashed down on the rooftop surface. Suddenly, rough hands gripped his arms and righted him.

He was dismayed to find that it was Moran, pressing the knife John had completely forgotten about up to his windpipe. Sherlock stood not five feet away, still holding his gun, but his arms were held up in a clear surrender.  They were now facing the opposite direction as before, with John facing the edge of the building in his chair, Moran behind him, and Sherlock facing the rest of the roof and the door.

“I knew it,” Moran panted. “I knew Jim was right. He was never wrong, and he said to get to you, get the doctor first. And that’s what I did. But I shouldn’t have tried to play with you, I see that now.” Moran nodded to the roof edge, where two large men were very much absent. John barely held in his wince as he considered their fates. “Eye for an eye, Holmes? My brothers for your doctor?”

“Look, I’ve surrendered,” Sherlock said rapidly. “Take me instead, there’s no need for him to be involved. Just take me.”

Moran just laughed. “No need for him? He’s my payback, Holmes. And besides, I don’t think you want him alive. Looked about ready to kill you himself, after that nice little speech you just made.” He brought the knife even closer to John’s skin. “I don’t need anyone spoiling my fun, so I’ll just do it myself.”

“Don’t!” Sherlock yelled, but Moran began to draw the knife across John’s throat before a large _crack_ stopped his progress. John jumped, eyes on Sherlock, who hadn’t seem to have raised his Browning although that was clearly a gunshot. John was sufficiently confused, but that could have been the blood loss. “John!” Sherlock yelled. John expected Moran to finish, but a large thump behind him told him that he didn’t seem to be standing anymore. He couldn’t turn to look.

Sherlock jumped forward, pushing John’s head up and pressing his hand hard against his neck. A constant string of “Oh God oh God oh God” was pouring from the detective's lips. “John! Can you still hear me? How bad is it? Oh God.”

John tried to answer, tried to point out that he was still alive, which must be a good thing, but the gag was doing his job but all he could manage were some grunts. Sherlock ripped the cloth unceremoniously from his mouth and asked again, unfolding the square of fabrics and pressing it against John’s throat.

“I think I’m okay,” John gasped once he had sufficient oxygen. “If I can still talk, I think it’s superficial. I didn’t even feel anything.”

Sherlock didn’t answer, he just put even more pressure onto the cut. Someone, who John assumed was the shooter, came up behind John and began untying his hands.

“God help us all,” came Lestrade’s gravelly voice. John sighed in relief. “He all right, Sherlock?”

Sherlock nodded tightly in answer.

“So, you’ve told Lestrade you’re alive too,” John said around the mound of fabric near his mouth.

“Who do you think gave me this?” Sherlock pointed to the bruise ripening on his cheek before quickly returning his hand to John’s neck. John normally would have laughed, if he wasn’t picturing doing the exact same thing. Before he could follow up on that thought, his bonds were opened and his shoulders straightened painfully. Lestrade came around to face John.

“Okay?” he asked. John nodded, pushing Sherlock’s hands away and applying the pressure himself. “Good. I need to get back down to the street, I have to tape off the area where those goons landed. I’ll send a medic up when they get here.” John nodded again and he was suddenly alone with Sherlock, who looked completely lost without something to do.

“John, I-“

“No, don’t want to hear it,” John said firmly. “Clearly I misinterpreted things. I’ll stay to give my account and then I’ll go. Don’t need me hanging around.” He didn’t look up at Sherlock as he stood and walked toward the door.

“No, John, wait,” Sherlock said behind him. John kept walking, but it hurt his heart and his head to hear that voice anymore. He needed to go. “John, I had to say that, don’t you see. _Please._ ”

It was the _please_ that made John turn around. Completely desperate and verging on anger, he swung to face the man.

“Had to say that? Had to? Well next time just let them throw me off, it’ll be a lot easier on me,” he fumed.

“But I didn’t mean it! I didn’t, I didn’t. Please. I had to say something that would keep his brothers’ attentions off of you and on me, so you could throw them when I gave the signal. Please, John. I meant none of it.”

Sometimes, John forgot how young Sherlock was. It was times like now, when he wasn’t hidden behind his aloof mask, that brought that realization back in sharp detail. His eyes were wide and desperate.

“Jesus Christ, Sherlock. I just never know what to think. Maybe next time you could be a little less convincing, yeah?” Sherlock opened his mouth, probably to say that any acting that was less than perfect wouldn’t work, but John held up a hand. “I need to get off this roof, and I need medical attention, and I need sleep. We can… I don’t know. We can talk later, if you’d like.”

And again, John turned his back on his once-dead best friend and made to leave the space that now had two horrifying connotations in his mind. One word stopped him.

“Yes.”

John turned despite himself, confused.

“Yes? You mean yes, we can talk later?”  

Sherlock’s face was red and he wasn’t looking at John, instead staring at the ground.

“Yes. What- what you said. In the shop. Before.”

John was still confused, until he remembered those unplanned words spoken in the broken remnants of Molly’s store. Those utterly, terrifyingly embarrassing words. John scrambled to correct whatever had transpired.

“I-I don’t need an answer. I just, I just needed you to stay behind. I don’t need- but you said yes. But I didn’t really. I-“

“John,” Sherlock cut off John’s rambling incoherence. He took a tentative step forward, then another, until they were a foot apart. He then slowly lowered himself onto one knee.

“Marry me, John Watson.”

“Jesus Christ,” was John’s answer.

“I don’t know how to take that.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Again, that’s not really an answer.”

“Of course I’ll marry you, you git. I asked you first.”

“Well then, of course I’ll marry you, you idiot.”

And then Sherlock leapt to his feet and seized John by the arms, pulling him close. He crashed his lips to John’s and it was a serial killer with a penchant for locked room murders mixed with a quiet night in front of the telly at Baker Street. It was all that was good in the world and all that was bad but that Sherlock took and made good again. It was rough and unrefined and John curled his hands around the back of Sherlock’s neck and through his hair, and Sherlock pulled John impossibly closer, and it was Heaven and Earth and fire and ice and –

“We’ll, uh, we’ll come back later, then.”

John turned and met the bemused face of Lestrade and the completely, incredulously shocked face of Sally Donovan. Anderson and the rest of the forensics team stood behind them, their reactions ranging from disgusted to sappy.

“No,” John said, and his voice cracked audibly. Lestrade smirked. “I’ve got to get my throat looked at. We’ll go.”

“Good idea,” Lestrade agreed. The rooftop crowd was otherwise silent until the two men reached the door, and then someone let out a quiet wolf whistle. Sherlock, instead of ushering John through the door and ignoring it, sent the force a cheeky grin and a wink over his shoulder and grabbed John’s hand, pulling him forward. Once the door swung closed behind them, they dissolved into hysterics, leaning against the wall until they could recover.

“Oh, they’ll never let us hear the end of it,” John said, but he couldn’t bring himself to be worried. Beside him, Sherlock just squeezed his hand.

“Come on. We’ll get you cleaned up and we can go home.” 

 

 

 

 

One day later, Sherlock moved all his new stuff into Baker Street. Ms Hudson slapped him across the face and then immediately gave him a hug. They attempted to unpack, and though John tried to help, his helping eventually lead to a few hours spent in very close proximity to each other on the couch. They didn’t get much done, but neither considered it a waste of time.

Two days later, Lestrade came over to hear the whole story. He didn’t apologize for hitting Sherlock and Sherlock didn’t apologize for nearly getting him fired. He and John made plans for another pub night soon, and Sherlock pouted in his chair until John told him he could come, as long as he didn’t provoke the bar staff until they kicked them out this time. Sherlock showed his gratitude by pulling John onto the couch for yet another unproductive afternoon.

And three days later, John went back to the hospital for his two week check-up. He had to explain to the nurses that yes, he knew that tall man harassing the staff, and that yes, that man expected to come into the examination room with him. Sherlock introduced himself to John’s doctor, his nurses, and random passers-by with a glowing “I’m Dr Watson’s _fiancé._ ” (They hadn’t left the flat in two days, and therefore hadn’t had a chance to try out the new titles. Sherlock was enjoying it, apparently.)

John had the task of explaining to his doctor that not only had he not spent the past two weeks resting and getting his eating habits back on track, but instead had eaten only the bare minimum and spent a night chasing a wanted criminal, which resulted in a re-sprained knee, several cuts from broken glass, and a shallow but sizeable knife wound on his throat. Sherlock didn’t help by adding in that they had spent the past three days being decidedly not restful as well, going into far more detail than that poor man ever needed to know.

“You didn’t have to tell him about the couch christening,” John sniggered as they left. (The doctor was thoroughly baffled as to how John was up and about with the number of medical problems he was currently dealing with, and had decided to let John determine his own treatment.)

“He wanted to know how you spent the last two weeks. That happened in the last two weeks,” Sherlock replied. (Sherlock had many ideas for John’s self-determined treatment. While most involved lying down, they were definitely not in the realm of “relaxing.”)

“Git,” John said fondly. “Let’s go home.”

And home they went. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! The Molly's Bookshop series is not quite finished, so be on the lookout for part four. 
> 
> Questions and comments are more than welcome at my [Tumblr](http://yourconductoroflight.tumblr.com). I'll also probably post previews for part four there.


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